Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Let's talk about sex.
[00:00:02] I'm Dr. Laura Prescott, Director of clinical training and associate professor for the clinical PsyD program at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles.
[00:00:14] Many people have asked me about infidelity. If they experience infidelity with a partner, is it possible to get over it? Should they just break up? Should they try and make it work out?
[00:00:27] And if they want to try and make it work out, how do they get past it? How do they deal with infidelity?
[00:00:33] So let's talk a little bit more about dealing with infidelity today.
[00:00:38] One important thing to remember before we dive into how to deal with it is that infidelity is often hard to define.
[00:00:46] And the reason for that is that different people have different ideas of what it means to be unfaithful. For example, for some people, it's, you can't flirt with anybody, flirting is unfaithful.
[00:00:57] For others, it's like, oh, well, that's fine. And, you know, maybe just don't hold somebody else's hand, don't kiss somebody else, don't have sex with somebody else all the way up to. People in consensual, non monogamous relationships may permit a lot of things that traditionally monogamous people may not. But even they may have some things in place, like, I need to vet your partner before you do anything with them, or I need to at least be around and hear about what goes on.
[00:01:25] Or please make sure you at least get tested for STDs before you do anything with a new partner.
[00:01:31] So everybody couples throuples, everybody has different rules for their own relationship. And it's important that you sit down and actually define those things at the outset of the relationship. This is something that many couples don't do and they just assume that being in society, people know what cheating is or is not.
[00:01:51] But because there's so many nuances, it really is important to sit down with your partner or partner and see what they actually think and set boundaries for your own relationship.
[00:02:05] So in terms of putting a broader definition to infidelity, I will just say that for our purposes today, we'll describe infidelity as crossing the boundaries that the partner or partners have set in their own relationship.
[00:02:19] And those boundaries, of course, can be physical or emotional.
[00:02:23] And in terms of infidelity, yes, some people cannot recover from it, and sometimes relationships break up. But there are many occasions in which people are able to be resilient and bounce back from infidelity. They work on it together, and sometimes they even come out stronger than they did before.
[00:02:46] So the first thing to think about when dealing with infidelity is, is go see a therapist and talk with a therapist.
[00:02:53] A lot of hard emotions will come up and a lot of things that people are dealing with issues may come up. It's really difficult to process those just by yourselves.
[00:03:05] And somebody who's an expert can really help you get through those things.
[00:03:11] And while you're talking with an expert, one of the main things that you can do is, is exploring the reasons behind why the infidelity occurred. There's many different reasons why and they're not always going to be these horrible, terrible reasons like, oh, well, they just didn't care about you and wanted to play around. That's actually not the case in a lot of situations.
[00:03:33] Sometimes it could be because of unresolved issues from the cheating person's youth. Maybe they've had attachment issues in their attachment style, they, that they've had with parental figures that kind of continued into their romantic relationships and that's still playing out.
[00:03:50] They perhaps have had some self esteem or body image issues or perhaps there's issues in the marriage, maybe there's communication issues, perhaps the partner isn't feeling like their needs are met or perhaps even just the relationship has been struggling for a long time. Often infidelity is a sign that a relationship has already been deteriorating and it's more of a, a kind of last ditch resort thing. It's not as often that the infidelity will be the cause of an otherwise perfect relationship going bad. Usually something has been going on whether it's within the relationship or with needs not being met or other issues.
[00:04:31] So with exploring the reasons, understand that these are reasons, but they're not excuses. So just because, hey, this is the reason why the cheating occurred, doesn't mean, okay, well, that's the reason the end. It's an excuse. All is forgiven. You don't have to own up to anything.
[00:04:49] The next thing to think about is being honest and transparent.
[00:04:54] So the person who did engage in the infidelity, you know, you don't want to engage in the list of. And then here's the detail where I took off this piece of clothing and then we did this position. And the other person's not going to want to know those great depths of detail.
[00:05:09] And even if they do, it may not be best to talk about all of that because it might make it hurt even more. But you do want to be transparent about what did occur and generalities about what happened and understanding like, hey, here's the story of what happened. If you want to hear, I'm open to telling you and being honest about it. Not lying, not beating around the bush saying, hey, here's what happened, here's what the situation was, and here's why I did it.
[00:05:40] Part of that involves accepting responsibility.
[00:05:43] So if you are the person who did cheat, you want to own up to it and say, yes, I did that, that was cheating, and actually have remorse for it and admit, yeah, it was my fault, I'm sorry for that. And truly being sorry, if there is no remorse, you can't really proceed with healing the relationship.
[00:06:10] Another thing to think about is with regards to the partner who was cheated on, you don't want to lash out and try and get revenge. That will just make things worse. For instance, you don't want to be like, well, you cheated on me, so I'm just going to go find someone off the street and have sex with them. Wee it's just going to involve more hurt and it will make things muddier.
[00:06:32] You also don't want to lash out on social media. You don't want to broadcast to the world, hey, world, guess what? My partner's horrible. They cheated.
[00:06:41] That's just going to make things worse.
[00:06:44] Also, with regards to the whole broadcasting thing, be mindful about who you tell.
[00:06:49] Sometimes it's helpful to tell trusted friends or family members, but you don't really want to tell too many people.
[00:06:56] You want people who you know will be supportive and will legitimately be invested in helping you heal in whatever ways best for you.
[00:07:05] You don't want to have people taking sides and drawing battle lines and assuming things because again, they don't know all of the details of what happened and they're not going to hear all about that and they shouldn't hear about all that.
[00:07:23] So another thing to do is make sure to remove any temptations.
[00:07:28] If a person is somebody that maybe was on a social media account, taking that person off social media or blocking their phone, if it's somebody who is easy to take out of their life, sometimes you can't really do that. Let's say that the person cheated on somebody at work. You can't really avoid the person at work forever. You have to work with them.
[00:07:52] So in that case, what you would have to do is just be very transparent about who you're with and what you're doing and what's going on. In that case, trying not to spend too too much time alone with that person.
[00:08:04] So it is harder when you can't avoid the person forever. But there are still things you can do to be more transparent about that process.
[00:08:13] Also, don't make any life changing decisions quickly. Sometimes it's easy for a person to be like, that's it, I give up, I'm leaving, bye and running out the door.
[00:08:22] And that's not a good way to resolve it either. Give it time. I'd say at least six months to really work through the issues and see if you can salvage your relationship or so. Those are some tips that I hope will be helpful if you find yourself in a situation in which you are dealing with infidelity.
[00:08:40] Thanks again for tuning in.
[00:08:42] Once Again, this is Dr. Laura Prescott, Director of Clinical Training and Associate professor for the Clinical PSYD Program, the Chicago School of Los Angeles.
