Infidelity: Breaking of trust. When people
marry they pledge before their friends, families, the state, and in most cases,
their god, that they will remain faithful to one another until separated by
death. This expectation of mutual trust is the foundation of their commitment
to each other. One significant element of this trust is the unspoken vow that
the couple will remain sexually exclusive. Another is that there is a certain
level of emotional intimacy that is reserved for the couple, not to be shared
with others. Having pledged faithfulness, it is not surprising that the
discoverer experiences shock upon finding that a mate has violated it.
Infidelity occurs when one partner in a relationship continues to believe that
the agreement to be faithful is still in force, while the other partner is
secretly violating it. You do not have to be married to experience infidelity,
as many people are in long-term, exclusive relationships. They may remain
unmarried, but in some way “wedded” and this includes long-term gay or lesbian
relationships.[1]
Most of Lusterman’s patients report that at
the moment of discovery their predominant feeling is that all hope is lost and
that the relationship is over. However, the majority of marriages that he had
treated because of infidelity have not only survived, but improved. In many
instances there are factors that have led to the infidelity, and that if both
partners work together to repair these circumstances, their relationship will
be greatly enhanced.[2]
Even though the revelation of an infidelity
is overwhelming and shocking to both the discoverer and the discovered,
reflection often leads them to recognise a series of actions, hints, and
behaviours that preceded not only the discovery, but the infidelity itself.
Each partner has been engaged in hiding many other thoughts and feelings from
him or herself, often for a long period of time. The term describing the
ability to hide things from yourself is denial, which is an unconscious act. It
can be defined as a way of resolving emotional conflict and allaying anxiety by
the unconscious disavowal of thoughts that would be otherwise unbearable.[3]
However, sometimes an unfaithful mate is such a skilled liar that it is all but
unthinkable that an infidelity has occurred. At other times, people are very
conscious of what they are doing, but develop the ability to disconnect that
awareness from other aspects of their lives.[4]
For example a person might be able to feel energetic about seeing his colleague
whom he’s having an affair with, but when he goes home, he totally forgets
about the colleague and makes love to his wife, feeling no guilt or
strangeness. It was as if there was one box in his mind for the colleague and
another for his wife, each absolutely separate from the other. Some
psychologists call this phenomenon compartmentalisation, which is a conscious
act.[5]
According to psychologist Janoff-Bulman, people
who experience severe psychological trauma suffer from a shattering of their
basic assumptions about the nature of the world, and the three fundamental
assumptions are: the world is benevolent, the world is meaningful, and the self
is worthy. After the trauma many say their world has fallen apart, the world
stinks, nothing seems to make sense, and there must be something terribly wrong
with you if something so awful has happened to you. People who react to trauma
this way are said to be suffering a post-traumatic stress reaction.[6]
Kaslow studied a group of people who believed that they had good marriages and
found that the qualities mot valued by these couples were “trust in each other
that includes fidelity, integrity and feeling safe,” and “permanent commitment
to the marriage.” Even people involved in unmarried romantic relationships
often hold this unspoken assumption of monogamy, whether heterosexual, gay or
lesbian relationships. Cheating in these relationships is also experienced as
very traumatic.[7]
An affair takes place over time. People may
have an affair without sex, and they may have sex without having the emotional
involvement. Once a committed relationship is established, if there is a secret
sexual and/or romantic involvement outside of the relationship, it is
experienced as an infidelity.[8]
Lusterman describes how he often heard patients
in tripod relationships tell him, after the breakup of first their marriage,
followed by the ending of their tripod affair, that they couldn’t believe how
blind they had been to the faults of the person with whom they were having the
affair. In many instances, people later regret that they couldn’t see their
affair as an unheeded sign that their marriage was in trouble.[9]
Some people begin to panic as they lose the
infatuated feeling. They confuse being “in love” with the more complex idea of
married love, and became desperate to recapture that lost feeling. This often
triggers the start of an affair.[10]
Special personal qualities crucial for a
happy relationship: commitment, sensitivity, generosity, consideration,
loyalty, responsibility, trustworthiness. Mates need to cooperate, compromise,
and follow through with joint decisions. They have to be resilient, accepting,
and forgiving. They need to be tolerant of each other’s flaws, mistakes and
peculiarities. These qualities are the very opposite of those we feel while
infatuated, where the other person is more a product of our imagination than a
real person.[11]
Having illusion is, unfortunately, the best preparation for disillusionment. It
is easy to confuse the loss of illusion with the loss of love and lead a person
to the false conclusion that the marriage is over.[12]
Married love is different from affair love.
In marriage, some days you feel the way you did when you first fell in love.
Other days you feel dispirited, tired, distracted, disappointed, angry. Even if
marriage begins with romantic love, it finds its continuity in married love,
with peaks of real passion, valleys of disappointment, and plateaus of “okay”
days. Successful couples know this.[13]
When one or both partners in a marriage are
not good at talking with one another, feelings get buried, sometimes for years.
Little disappointments and angers are hidden away. Problems are not solved.
When a person in this sort of marriage suddenly experiences infatuation again,
but now with someone else, it is nearly impossible to talk about it. Secrecy is
part of the excitement of an affair. The danger of discovery can be as
pulse-tingling as the new relationship itself. It adds spice to life when the
marriage seems bland, and it is addictive, carrying with it a powerful
emotional rush. As with other additions, the rush is often followed by a sense
of loss, real life doesn’t seem as good, so the person is drawn to return to
the source of rush.[14]
The secrecy also carries with it fear, which makes addicts into liars.[15]
People who are otherwise honest become remarkably skilled at lying when they
fear the loss of that to which they have become addicted. For some, lying is
associated with shame: being ashamed of what one had done.[16]
Sometimes one can never again sure of the
cheating partner, and never even really sure that the partner stopped contact
with the third party.[17]
The first meaning the discoverer may attach
to the discovery of infidelity is that their partner no longer loves him/her,
or that the harm to the marriage is irreparable. Upon reflection, they may find
a very different meaning.[18]
Marriage means more than the husband-wife
relationship. You may have raised children together, developed important
relationship with one another’s families, and have a common network of friends.
The loss of a home can also be very traumatic as people often become wedded to
a place, even a favourite spot.[19]
In many cases, people divorce in rage,
often causing their children the continual pain of having to take sides.[20]
Psychiatrist Victor Frankl was imprisoned
in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. During his imprisonment he wondered
why some inmates were able to survive this unbelievably demeaning and degrading
experience without losing their own humanity while others crumbled. He came to
the conclusion that those who survived emotionally were able to find some form
of meaning in this most ununderstandable of circumstances.[21]
Psychologist Harriet Goldhor Lerner points
out that women learned from childhood that they are to nurture, serve and
sooth. They also learn that the direct expression of anger is “unladylike.”
They often learn to “deself.” This occurs when women “betray and sacrifice the
self in order to preserve harmony with others.” A deselfed woman turns her
anger inward, and can endlessly wonder what she did wrong that led to her
husband’s affair, rather than examining the relationship itself. Some of the
ways women express anger include silent submission, ineffective fighting and
blaming, and emotional distancing.[22]
The loss of trust is the most painful
result of the discovery of infidelity. When trust is lost it’s hard to sit down
and talk about what has happened, what it means to each of you, and what the
future holds for your marriage. Many people report that their attempts to begin
talking are disastrous. What may start as a quiet conversation can become a
heated argument within seconds.[23]
In most cases it’s only after the truth is
told that it becomes possible to communicate once again. Lying creates an all
but impenetrable barrier. Many people report that once they’ve been told the
truth, they understand that at some level, they knew all along. But along with
relief comes hurt. Both partners need to understand that restoring trust won’t
be easy. The first response most people have to an honest admission is very emotional,
for example crying, shouting, and throwing things.[24]
The restoration of honest communication
must first come from the person who has acted dishonestly. To do this, there
are two tasks that must be accomplished. The first deals with clearing the air by
admitting what has happened. The other is accepting responsibility for the pain
caused by the lying that is always part of cheating, eg. express remorse
saying, “I understand that, because of the many lies that I have told you, I
have hurt you deeply and destroyed trust.” (Note that the remorse is not about
the act of infidelity, but specifically about the lying.)[25]
The normal reaction to trauma is to be on
your guard.[26]
Honesty is the necessary prelude to trust. Trust is the prelude to intimacy.[27]
Regaining trust and putting the infidelity aside are not sufficient to move a
couple toward a better marriage. The marriage review is a process that helps
both partners develop a new set of skills that will enable them not simply to
withstand the crisis but to find in it the seeds of a stronger relationship. To
begin this review, it’s necessary to make a serious commitment of time as the
future of your marriage may well depend on this effort.[28]
Lusterman, Don-David. Infidelity: A Survival Guide. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications,
1998.
[1] Don-David Lusterman, Infidelity:
A Survival Guide (Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, 1998), 3.
[2] Lusterman, Infidelity, 4.
[3] Lusterman, Infidelity, 5.
[4] Lusterman, Infidelity, 7.
[5] Lusterman, Infidelity, 8.
[6] Lusterman, Infidelity, 12.
[7] Lusterman, Infidelity, 12.
[8] Lusterman, Infidelity, 18.
[9] Lusterman, Infidelity, 33.
[10] Lusterman, Infidelity, 37.
[11] Lusterman, Infidelity, 39.
[12] Lusterman, Infidelity, 40.
[13] Lusterman, Infidelity, 40.
[14] Lusterman, Infidelity, 41.
[15] Lusterman, Infidelity, 41.
[16] Lusterman, Infidelity, 42.
[17] Lusterman, Infidelity, 53.
[18] Lusterman, Infidelity, 63.
[19] Lusterman, Infidelity, 70.
[20] Lusterman, Infidelity, 85.
[21] Lusterman, Infidelity, 86.
[22] Lusterman, Infidelity, 97.
[23] Lusterman, Infidelity, 105.
[24] Lusterman, Infidelity, 107.
[25] Lusterman, Infidelity, 109.
[26] Lusterman, Infidelity, 120.
[27] Lusterman, Infidelity, 121.
[28] Lusterman, Infidelity, 123.
