Henri Nouwen once wrote about some trapeze artists who became his friends, emphasising the perfect synchronicity between them and the total trust that the one who jumps has when he lets go of the trapeze and remains in the air for a second, waiting to be caught by his teammate. But what if, at the last moment, when it is too late to hold on to the trapeze, he realises, looking into the eyes of his teammate, that he has no intention of catching him?
With a few nuances, this must be the feeling of the person who discovers that he or she has been betrayed—the shock of falling into the void without a safety net, because the other person has moved, net and all, to another emotional address.
Extramarital affairs have reached epidemic proportions in our society—at least that’s what surveys and studies on the subject suggest—leading psychotherapist Esther Perel to say that infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.
According to statistics available on infidelityfacts.com, in 41% of married couples at least one spouse admits to having been unfaithful, and 31% of amorous escapades are discovered or confessed by the errant partner. The infidelity rate would be even higher if the protagonists could be sure that their betrayal would remain hidden from their partner’s eyes—68% of female and 74% of male respondents would be willing to slide down the adultery slide if their secret could be 100% protected.
The French and Italians are the European champions of infidelity, with more than 55% of men and 33% and 44% of women respectively saying they have cheated on their partner, according to a survey of six countries by the French Institute for Public Opinion Polls (IFOP).
A study by the American Association for Marriage and Family shows that 15% of American women and 25% of men admit to cheating. These figures rise even higher if we include cases of purely emotional infidelity, with 20% of respondents admitting to having been caught up in this type of attachment.
There is, in fact, a veritable inflation of surveys on fidelity, and navigating between them can be truly disheartening for those who have come to the altar with the firm conviction that the vow of faithfulness made on their wedding day will be respected for the rest of their lives. Paradoxically, the desensitisation to cheating takes place in a society that makes love the central value of a relationship—except that in the digital age, love nonchalantly abandons the exclusivity assumed by the vows and distils itself into a quagmire of temptation and indulgence.
The outlines of unfaithfulness in the digital age
Health entrepreneur Chrisanna Northrup and US sociologists Pepper Schwartz and James Witte surveyed nearly 100,000 people to gain insights into key aspects of couples’ relationships, from communication to affection and from sexual relations to financial cooperation. The results of this extensive 2011 survey are published in a book called The Surprising Secrets of Happy Couples and What They Reveal About Creating a New Normal In Your Relationship.
According to the survey, 33% of men and 19% of women have cheated on their partner, and the reasons for the infidelity are varied. Sometimes the danger can be spotted where there is the least suspicion—among family friends.
While the majority of respondents (86% of men and 85% of women) were convinced that their friends posed no threat to marital harmony, the waters of attraction to their partners ran deeper and murkier—almost half of men and a quarter of women admitted to being attracted to friends of the opposite sex and were even open to acting in more favourable circumstances.
Business trips were also one of the most common occasions for betraying a partner’s trust, with 36% of men and 13% of women giving in to temptation during such a trip. Relationship happiness and sex life satisfaction were not an absolute guarantee of fidelity, but the percentage of those who were satisfied with their relationship at home who still cheated on their partner was three times lower than those who started a new relationship motivated by frustration with the official relationship.
Interestingly, ex-partners still posed a threat to the current relationship, with 32% of women and 21% of men admitting to cheating with their former girlfriend or boyfriend. In the first two to five years of a relationship, old romances prove very attractive to those in new relationships, with 42% of respondents succumbing to their seductive charms—and the icing on the cake seems to be that this type of infidelity was also present in relationships rated as satisfying or even happy.
The vulnerability to former lovers is not good news in the digital age, where “it has never been easier to cheat, and it has never been more difficult to keep a secret,” as psychotherapist Esther Perel points out.
About 10% of extramarital affairs have their origins in online communication, and affairs with partners from older relationships have increased over the past decade thanks to social media, says Perel.
The virtual universe provides a convenient means of reconnecting with former loves: the curiosity to find out what is new in the lives of those we were once attached to can be satisfied at the click of a button. Of course, it takes more than a click to rekindle the old relationship, but once interest is piqued, a secret relationship can easily take root in the soil of a familiarity that is relatively easy to rebuild.
Extramarital affairs also come with a financial outlay that the cheaters have to hide from their partner’s watchful eye—although, according to one survey, they hardly notice a slice of their joint budget disappearing month after month. According to the website VoucherCloud, which surveyed 2,645 people about their leisure spending, almost a quarter of respondents (aged over 25 and married for at least five years) said they had cheated on their partner, with the most common escapades lasting an average of six months and starting after the first two years of marriage. The average financial cost of an extramarital affair was $444 per month, spent on gifts, dinners out, hotel bills and various activities together.
The size of this budget may be perceived differently, depending on the angle, but it is far from covering the full cost of an extramarital escapade. When the secret emerges from its dark depths, the ultimate cost can include the ruin of a marriage, the emotional distress of children, the loss of a home or financial destabilisation. And we wouldn’t be wrong to add to the list the slipping into a pattern of behaviour that will be hard to break even in a future relationship.
Cheating has long-lasting patterns
There are popular versions of the idea that you leave the past behind when you settle down, and that changing partners several times before your wedding day is not only proof that you have stepped into the moral laxity of modern society, but also a guarantee that, having experienced it all, you will be more responsible in accepting the responsibilities and restrictions of marriage.
Kayla Knopp, who teaches psychology at the University of Denver, coordinated a study to see if people who cheated on their partners were more likely to show that vulnerability in future relationships. The study of 484 unmarried adults aged 18 to 35 was presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the study found that 45% of respondents who said they had cheated in one relationship went on to cheat in the next.
In addition, people who had been cheated on were three times more likely to be cheated on in a new relationship, while those who suspected they were being cheated on were 10 times more likely to transfer their suspicions to future relationships.
While Knopp admits that she doesn’t know exactly what underlies this pattern that emerges throughout the relationships of cheaters and those who are cheated on, she says that “it indicates that how people are feeling about trust, fidelity, and commitment in their relationships is even more salient than what their partners are actually doing.”
According to the study by Whisman & Snyder (2007), the likelihood of infidelity decreases with age, and the risk of cheating on a spouse is also lower for religious people. The study also found that the risk of being cheated on increases for remarried women—and for both sexes as the number of previous sexual partners increases.
A person’s relationship history has a lot to say about their future relationship, so Knopp points out that an honest discussion about what happened in the past and strategies for avoiding past mistakes can provide a more solid foundation for dealing with future challenges.
Dealing with adultery in its true dimensions
Despite the casual nature of infidelity in modern society, there is a dissonance between behaviour and values, with adultery remaining a morally-sanctioned behaviour—91% of American respondents believe it is wrong to have an affair, more wrong than using pornography (66%), having an abortion (49%) or getting divorced (24%).
John Grohol, founding member and president of the International Society for Mental Health Online, disdains the way the media tends to treat adultery: as a common experience, comfortably within the realm of normality.
For one thing, he refuses to believe the statistic that half of all relationships involve at least one deviation from the fidelity trajectory. Many of the statistics are not based on research worthy of the name, while others are driven by aggressive marketing by those who sell infidelity services, Grohol argues.
Reviewing a number of studies conducted between the mid-1990s and 2007, he argues that there is a six per cent risk of infidelity in a relationship, rising to 25 per cent over the course of the relationship: still unpleasant, but much lower than the commonly reported figure.
Not only is cheating not as common an experience as you might think, but it is a red flag indicating that there is a problem, either in the relationship or with the person choosing to cheat. If the relationship is on the rocks, the priority should be to fix it, not to shamefully escape out the back door. An affair only “fixes” the problem in the short term—or rather, applies a thick layer of “concealer” under which the problem will continue to fester.
Even if the relationship is too badly damaged, honour dictates a reverse order—get out of the relationship and only then look for a new one, says Grohol, noting that “people who cheat have basically lost all hope for their relationship, and all respect for their partner.”
On the subject of hope for a faltering relationship, Esther Perel likes to tell the people she counsels that if they put just a tenth of the enthusiasm into their marriage that they put into an affair, their relationship would be transformed.
When it comes to respect, how we treat others—especially the one we have sworn to love until our last breath—says a lot about who we are, Grohol concludes, reaffirming the perniciousness of a life woven with threads of lies and betrayal.
The alternatives are few, but far more sensible—either the adulterous relationship is exposed, with consequences, or the partners work on what they already have, because it’s less costly in every way to fix a broken relationship than to dive into the grass on the other side of the fence, which hides its own imperfections.
Feeling lost after infidelity
Once infidelity has been committed, the betrayed partner undergoes one of the most traumatising experiences he or she can go through—one in which the authenticity of the past is thrown into doubt and the direction of the future is no longer clear.
The question that can shake both partners (if the guilty party wants reconciliation) is whether their relationship, shattered into dozens of shards, still has a chance of becoming whole in the future.
Julia Cole, a psychotherapist for more than 25 years, believes that even such a relationship has a chance. Cole advises her clients who are determined to divorce immediately (or forgive immediately) to take some time to reflect on their relationship, including the context in which the episode of infidelity took place. Trying to make sense of what happened is useful in the reconciliation scenario, to avoid another bout of cheating, but also in the separation scenario, as we tend to drag old problems into new relationships.
Experience in counselling has taught Cole that relationships can be salvaged, but it’s unrealistic to expect such deep wounds to heal overnight. It can take up to a year for the initial pain to subside, and the scars are part of the story too—”it might fade but it will always be part of your life together.”
Breaking the news of a spouse’s infidelity does not make the difficult process of getting over the shock any easier, especially when relatives and friends throw their own versions of what should happen to the couple into the epicentre of the conflict. In fact, dealing with the issue discreetly (if at all possible) makes reconciliation easier, since “raw wounds of the betrayal are marinated in public humiliation”, as Peggy Drexler, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University, notes in an article for the Huffington Post.
There is hope even after adultery, assures Jay Kent-Ferraro, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and counselling. Kent-Ferraro speaks not only from counselling experience, but also from personal experience—his marriage fell apart after he cheated on his wife with an exotic dancer he met on a business trip. Julia, the cheated-on wife, also battled a form of lymphatic cancer while dealing with the pain of divorce. And Jay experienced the pain of successive losses caused by his infidelity—the loss of his wife, the separation from his children, the shame of having failed as a husband and father, and the negative impact of his story on his professional life.
Eventually, Jay and Julia remarried and even wrote a book, Surprised by Love, in which they describe the story of the ruin and rebuilding of their relationship, arguing that there is life after adultery—it’s just a long road to rebuilding it. Sometimes you only notice the moon after the barn has burned down, notes Kent-Ferraro, who argues that rebuilding a relationship after the storm of infidelity has passed has less to do with the details of the extramarital affair than with how both partners choose to respond to the disaster.
In fact, most psychotherapists who counsel couples who have reached this impasse agree that marital recovery can only occur when the cheated person’s willingness to forgive intersects with the betrayer’s sincere regret.
How to get over adultery: The road to reconciliation is paved with forgiveness
The journey to healing has its own pace for each couple, depending on a number of factors linked to the personalities of the couple, the specificities of the relationship before the episode of infidelity, and the particularities and the duration of the parallel relationship. Nevertheless, it always takes two people to repair a damaged relationship, and the harsh journey through the wilderness of betrayal is not possible without forgiveness at every step.
Forgiveness is an ongoing process in which the decision to make peace with the past is made not once, but whenever it is needed—and it is needed many, many times, asserts Jill Savage, author of several books on family, who shares her experience of rebuilding her marriage on her blog. Although she experienced the trauma of a cancer diagnosis, Jill says the pain was incomparably less than the pain of her husband Mark leaving her four months after she accidentally discovered he was having an extra-marital affair. Forgiveness is a choice, says Jill, the only one that allows the seeds of trust to sprout again, and it must be renewed dozens and hundreds of times—each new detail of the affair pouring salt on the still fresh wound, but at the same time demanding forgiveness for the whole episode and its aftermath. The road to forgiveness is a frightening one, Jill concludes—considering the risk of opening herself up to disappointment again—but it’s one that’s been worth the price for her family.
And it can bear fruit for other couples, too, although those who have betrayed the trust of a loved one must arm themselves with the patience to witness their partner’s hesitation amidst the confusing cues of their new experience, without pressuring him or her and without demanding that reconciliation unfold on their timetable.
The shoes of the offender also have their own bumpy road ahead of them
The reconciliation process is not easy for the cheating spouse either—and its progress depends largely on how he or she deals with the rift in the marriage.
Hope for a restored relationship also depends on the offender’s willingness to take responsibility for his or her choices, says counsellor Abe Kaas. An “I’m to blame, but so are you” approach is not a good predictor of marital reconciliation, especially in the fairly likely situation where the marriage has had its weaknesses, of which the cheated spouse is not entirely unaware. You’re 100% guilty of betraying your partner’s trust, however imperfect he or she may be, Kaas argues, because real problems in a relationship always have legitimate solutions, and adultery is not one of them.
Total honesty is another goal to tick off the list, note Stephen Arterburn and Jason B. Martinkus in their book Worth Her Trust, stressing that even “harmless” lies aren’t acceptable—the cheater must be honest about painful truths or unimportant details of the present if he or she is to renew their partner’s worryingly depleted trust.
Openness to discussing the affair, however uncomfortable, is necessary, emphasises therapist Andrew Brimhall, although the natural reaction of the wronged spouse is to move on from the painful subject rather than to revisit it cyclically. The problem with this approach is that the unresolved issues will continue to run through the cheated spouse’s mind and eventually the issues swept under the carpet can implode. There is only one healthy way to deal with the sensitive issues of the past, and that is to allow the other person to feel that their hurt feelings are validated and that the fears that are holding them back from recovery can be addressed whenever necessary.
Finally, no matter how diligently he or she follows the steps of rehabilitation, the cheater should not show signs of impatience if the relationship is stuck for longer than he or she would like, because this attitude minimises the betrayed partner’s experience and does not allow the spouse to fully feel and process the pain of betrayal, the authors point out.
A sustained effort by both partners will also bring better times to a relationship shattered by broken trust, says Mira Kirshenbaum, a relationship in which pain, anxiety and anger will return to more manageable dimensions and will haunt the couple’s memories less and less.
The fact that a couple fighting for a future together can heal even a relationship devastated by infidelity underlines the need to build and protect it early on, before a love triangle is formed. Julia Cole smiles when she hears reunited couples talk about how their relationship has emerged stronger from the pain of discovering infidelity—not because she questions the couple’s hard-won outcome, but because she knows there are many ways to get to a certain desirable point…and some are more costly than others. “My view on that is that you probably could have learned those lessons without the agony that comes from learning your partner had an affair.”
The experience of adultery can only be seen from two diametrically-opposed perspectives.
For those who have not felt its throes, it remains a lesson to be learned from afar, without experiencing the agony of which Cole speaks. For those who have been burned by the fire, the agony remains a door through which they are forced to enter, either alone or accompanied by the partner who betrayed them.
If, at the end of the journey, they manage to have enough confidence to perform the acrobatic stunt again as a couple, without the fear that no one will be there to catch them, they have managed to rewrite their story in a different way from the sad outcome predicted by the plot of betrayal—a story in which love is renewed with all the enthusiasm of the beginning, in front of witnesses seen and unseen.
Carmen Lăiu is editor of Signs of the Times Romania and ST Network.