S2 EP265 – Understanding Infidelity: Reasons and Recovery Steps

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Infidelity is a fairly common issue in relationships, and today I want to address some of the causes of infidelity and also how to heal from it, either within the relationship, or having left the relationship.

Often, someone who has been cheated on wants to know why. Clients have asked me questions such as:

“Why would my boyfriend cheat on me?”
“I’m pretty sure my wife is cheating on me, and I want to know why.”
“I know that my husband has been cheating on me for years. I don’t get why he does this.”

Why do people cheat on their partners? And why do others have affairs that their partners know about? 

Here are some of the reasons for cheating that I have encountered in my many years of working with relationships.

Ed has been cheating on his wife for years. Ed is addicted to the thrill of conquest. It is not actually the sex he is after, but the sense of power he feels when he is able to get a woman in bed with him. Because Ed takes no responsibility for his own feelings and sense of worth, he uses women to fill him and define him. It has nothing to do with his wife – it is all about his lack of responsibility for his own neediness.

Eloise cheats on her husband because she is seeking the attention from men that she refuses to give to herself. Eloise is constantly giving herself up to her husband and then blaming him for her unhappiness. Like Ed, Eloise takes no responsibility for her own feelings and needs. She seeks validation through sex and attention outside of her marriage because she refuses to learn to love herself. Eloise’s cheating has nothing to do with her husband.

Max is terrified of intimacy. While he claims to love his girlfriend, he has a deep fear of being controlled by a woman. Instead of taking responsibility for his fears and developing a loving adult who is capable of setting limits against engulfment, his way of avoiding this fear is to have affairs. His cheating has nothing to do with his girlfriend.

So the bottom line of infidelity is that the cheater is addicted to getting filled up and validated through conquest or sex because he or she is abandoning themselves.
 
Then there are those partners who have affairs that their partners know about, which cannot be called cheating since they are being honest about it. Why do they do this?

Gene and Gloria married after being long-time friends. They hoped that the passion would develop between them, but it never did. They care deeply about each other, but they have no chemistry. While Gene is fine with this, Gloria isn’t and has a second relationship that meets her needs for passion and romance. Gene knows about this and accepts it.

Roger has been with Edith for 30 years. While he loves her and doesn’t want to leave her and break up their family, they have little in common and little to say to each other. Roger has another relationship with Angie – a deeply connected emotionally and sexually intimate relationship. Edith knows about this, as Roger spends half his time with Angie. While Edith doesn’t like this, she has accepted it rather than end their marriage.

So there are basically two major reasons people have affairs, the first being far more prevalent than the second: 

• The first reason is that they are addicted to getting filled up and getting their sense of worth through sex or conquest. They are needy people who emotionally abandon themselves and use sex or power to fill the inner black hole that comes from their self-abandonment. These people generally have multiple affairs.
• The second reason is that they are in a long-term marriage that they don’t want to leave, but the marriage is completely unfulfilling. These people do not have multiple affairs but have a committed relationship with another person while staying married. Their partners generally know about it.

Many people who cheat are unwilling to do the inner work necessary to fill their own inner emptiness. Their cheating is addictive, and it is likely that they are also participating in other addictions to fill their emptiness, such as smoking, drinking, drugs, spending, gambling, food, work, TV, Internet, and so on. 

Until they decide to learn how to love themselves and take responsibility for their own feelings, it is unlikely that they will stop cheating. But healing can occur when each partner is willing to do their inner work.

Megan contacted me for counseling because she had just found out that her husband, Jim, was having an affair. Although she was feeling hurt and angry, she didn’t feel justified in getting too hurt and angry because she had also been having an affair.

Megan told me that she and Jim still loved each other, and they didn’t want to break up their family, but her discovery of his affair took her out of denial. She had been able to rationalize her affair to herself, but she couldn’t rationalize Jim’s. She had to acknowledge that something was really wrong, and she was worried that this meant the end of their relationship.  

I assured Megan that the affairs were not the main problem but were a symptom of a deeper problem. It did not need to mean the end of the relationship. She and Jim could decide to learn about the deeper problems in their relationship and eventually create a much more satisfying relationship.

Megan and Jim entered their marriage, as most people do, with the expectation that the other person would make them happy. They entered feeling some emptiness, unworthiness, and insecurity, hoping their partner would fill them, validate them, and complete them. Yet as time went on, neither felt happy, secure, filled or complete. They began to look elsewhere. Perhaps someone else – someone more attentive and more emotionally available, or sexier, or more playful, would fill the emptiness, validate their worth, and make them happy.

An underlying problem lies in how many people in our society view what makes them happy. Any commercial will illuminate the underlying problem:

• Get this car – it will make you happy.
  
• Get this house – it will make you happy.
  
• Wear these clothes. Then you will look good and get approval and that will make you happy.
  
• Go on this diet – then you will look good, find your beloved and then you will be happy.
  
• Take this pill – then you will be happy.
  
• Go on this vacation – that will make you happy.
  
• Get this toy, this appliance, this new gadget – then you will be happy.

But Megan had the house, the car, the husband, the children, the money, the job, the antidepressants – and she still wasn’t happy. So, she went looking for another person to make her happy.

The problem is that as long as Megan and Jim believe that something external will make them happy, they will be unhappy, and they will keep looking for another person, better sex, a bigger house, and so on to make them happy.

Infidelity generally comes from the same inner emptiness as does alcohol and drug abuse, food addiction, gambling, spending, shopping, and so on. In the case of infidelity, the addiction is to attention, approval, validation, or sex – using another person to fill the inner emptiness and take away the inner aloneness. Rather than end their relationship, taking their emptiness and aloneness with them into their next relationship, Megan and Jim decided to do their inner healing work. They decided that it was worth trying to save their marriage. 

They came to one of my Inner Bonding Intensives and learned about all the ways they were making the other person responsible for their well-being and happiness. They learned and practiced Inner Bonding, learning to take responsibility for their own feelings and for connecting with an ever-present source of love and wisdom to help them learn to love themselves. They discovered that they had no love to share with each other until they learned how to fill themselves with love and to be loving to themselves. 

• They learned to stay focused inward, on their own feelings and behavior, rather than have their eyes on the other’s plate.
  
• They learned that their intention is the most powerful thing they have, and that they are either in the intent to protect against pain or the intent to learn about loving themselves in any given moment. They discovered that the intent to learn about themselves and each other creates intimacy while the intent to protect against being hurt creates distance.
  
• They learned to explore their own fears and beliefs rather than keep trying to get the other to change, or to continue to get filled externally.
  
• They learned how to discover their true soul self and how to define their own worth
  
• They learned how to connect with their personal source of inner, spiritual guidance to help them know the loving actions toward themselves and with each other, and they learned to take loving actions for themselves rather than try to get their partner to take care of them.

By being willing to do their Inner Bonding work and learn how to take emotional responsibility for themselves, Megan and Jim were able to create a much more intimate and fulfilling relationship. The affairs, rather than ending their relationship, led to creating a whole new and satisfying relationship. At this point, neither Megan nor Jim has any desire to have an affair.

How about emotional infidelity? Is your relationship suffering from emotional infidelity?

Emotional infidelity occurs when you or your partner become emotionally connected with someone outside your relationship – in person, on the phone, on video, or on text.

Is emotional infidelity dangerous to a marriage or committed relationship? 

One way of looking at emotional infidelity is that it is very dangerous, because it not only takes away time and energy from the marriage, but it can lead to sexual infidelity and possibly to the end of marriage.

Another way of looking at it is that it is a symptom of problems that already exist within a marriage. My experience with the couples I work with is that when the primary relationship is not emotionally and physically intimate, each person may be vulnerable to a form infidelity – either emotional and/or sexual. Rather than blaming the affair for the problems, why not address the real problem?

Emotional affairs are compelling because it is so easy to be close with someone with whom you have no shared responsibility – no money issues, no children, no chores. It is easy to share your deepest feelings with someone with whom you have no conflict. It is easy to get the good feelings that you get when someone who doesn’t live with you and doesn’t see all your issues thinks you are wonderful. But it is a cop-out – an easy way out of dealing with the real issues at hand. And if this affair does lead to a breakup of your marriage and into a new committed relationship, the chances are you will end up with the same problems – because we take our unhealed issues with us. So why waste your time? Why not deal with the problems now? 

The primary problem that leads to emotional infidelity is emotional distance between partners.

While emotional infidelity is a symptom of emotional distance within the primary relationship, the emotional distance is also a symptom of the deeper issues within the relationship. These deeper issues might be:

• One or both partners trying to have control through anger, blame, and criticism – which are overt forms of control.
  
• One or both partners trying to have control through caretaking, that is giving themselves up and taking responsibility for the other person’s feelings – which is a covert form of control.
  
• One of both partners withdrawing and resisting being controlled by the other partner – also a covert form of control.
  
• Neither partner taking emotional responsibility for his or her own feelings of pain and joy. Each partner abandoning themselves – with self-judgment and ignoring their feelings through addictions, and/or making the other responsible for their feelings.
  
• Power struggles that result from the control and resistance dynamic and an inability to resolve conflict.

The relationship system that develops, when neither partner takes responsibility for his or her own feelings, and when each partner tries to have control in overt or covert ways, grinds down the love until each person feels disconnected from their partner and lonely in the relationship. This is when they are susceptible to emotional infidelity. 

These patterns do not disappear just because you leave or move into another relationship.

You take your overt and covert forms of control with you into any relationship, as well as your underlying fears of rejection and fears of engulfment that underlie these forms of control. These patterns don’t generally show up early in a relationship or in an emotional or sexual affair, but that doesn’t mean they are gone. If your new relationship were to become your committed primary relationship, these patterns would again surface.

Why waste what might turn out to be a wonderful relationship by not dealing with your fears, controlling patterns, and self-abandonment now, in your current relationship? Unless of course there is also physical or severe emotional abuse. Instead of addictively looking to someone else to fill up your emptiness and take away your aloneness and loneliness, why not learn to do this for yourself so that you can break your dysfunctional patterns and become the loving person you are capable of being? Imagine the wonderful relationship you and your partner might have if both of you were to learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings and your own ability to love!

Infidelity doesn’t have to mean the end of your relationship. While very challenging, when both people are open to learning, they can heal and create an even stronger relationship.

Sheldon wrote this question to me during one of my events:

“I am trying to repair my 20-year marriage after my infidelity. I was discovered by my wife two years ago. I had been visiting massage parlors and prostitutes for a period of three years. We spent six months in counseling and made a little progress but stopped going because of issues with our counselor. My wife is still suspicious of me and has no trust in me at all. How long should I expect before I can regain a little bit of trust? I know that I can’t live the rest of my life like this.”

This is what I said to Sheldon: “Infidelity is a very challenging issue and there is much to learn from it. Something I’m not hearing in your question is what you have learned in the last two years since your wife discovered your infidelity. Visiting massage parlors and prostitutes is a sign of deep self-abandonment. Seeking these experiences indicates that you felt empty inside and were looking to be filled up externally through sexual experiences. If you have not done the inner work of discovering how you were abandoning yourself, and have not learned to love yourself, fill yourself, and be a trustworthy loving adult toward yourself and your wife, then it is unrealistic for her to trust you.

“Regaining her trust means that you need to be genuinely trustworthy toward yourself and her. Just stopping your visits to massage parlors and prostitutes does not constitute being trustworthy.

“On the other hand, your wife also needs to do her own inner work to be trustworthy with herself. Of course, I don’t know your situation, but very often, when I work with a person whose spouse was unfaithful, they intuitively knew about it but didn’t trust themselves. It is unrealistic for her to regain trust in you, even if you have done your inner work and have become honest and trustworthy, until she learns to trust herself. Most of us have a hard time trusting others until we fully trust ourselves.

“In addition, if your wife has not done her inner work to not take your infidelity personally, then she will likely continue to feel angry and victimized by you. She needs to understand that your sexually addictive behavior was coming from your self-abandonment and was not about her.  

“So, even if you have done your inner work, if your wife has not done hers, it is unrealistic for you to expect her to trust you. However, her lack of trust is really her issue, not yours. If you know that you are now an honest and trustworthy person, then it is up to you to not take her lack of trust toward you personally. This is also a challenging part of your inner work.”

It is my experience that when couples face this issue and do their own inner work to learn to love and value themselves and are then able to share their love with each other, their relationship not only heals, but becomes stronger than it was before the infidelity. When they each accept the challenge of learning from the painful situation, so much growth occurs that they are often able to create a whole new relationship.

Sheldon said, “I know that I can’t live the rest of my life like this.” That’s good, but he needs to stop making his wife responsible for whether or not he lives the rest of his life this way. I encouraged him to apply his energy toward doing his inner work so that he could heal his marriage and not have to live this way the rest of his life.

It’s important to see infidelity like most other addictions – as a way to fill an emptiness that the cheating person isn’t filling for themselves. If you are the person being cheated on, it’s vitally important for you to learn to not take your partner’s unfaithful behavior personally, while also doing your own inner work to understand your side of your relationship system. While you didn’t cause your partner to be unfaithful, you might have contributed to the problems between you so it’s important for you to do your own healing.

If your partner has cheated on you and you are devastated, then it’s likely that you have been making your partner responsible for your sense of worth and safety. While of course it’s painful to find out about infidelity, devastation comes from self-abandonment, so it’s vital for you to practice Inner Bonding and learn to love yourself.

If you choose to leave your relationship due to your partner cheating, it’s very important for you to get the support you need to discover your part of the relationship system, and to learn not to take his or her infidelity personally, and to heal the heartbreak resulting from the infidelity.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

I invite you to heal your relationships with my 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from all of our books and courses and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.