Nothing can be more devastating than finding out your partner has had an affair, but as our Sex and Relationships Expert, Matty Silver, discusses, it isn’t necessarily about the act of sex. It can be a craving for intimacy, a feeling of neglect or ignored and often without the intention of hurting their partner.
Some month ago, one of my clients, a woman in her 40s, discovered her husband had an affair with a colleague when he was overseas attending a medical conference. She only found out when she went through his phone messages after he came back. He didn’t deny it, but was quite upset that she checked his phone. He explained it was “only a fling” it just happened. The woman involved was also married and lived on the other side of the world. This was the first time he had cheated on his wife and he believed telling her would only have upset her.
But nothing is more devastating for many of my clients than discovering their partner has had an affair. Experiencing infidelity in a relationship can be hurtful and very damaging and the immediate response after discovering a partner’s affair is usually a combination of disbelief, anger, sadness and grief.
Another client is a man who has been together with his wife for about 22 years and they have two teenagers. He hates his job, has to work long hours, his sex life with his wife is almost non-existent and he has been feeling depressed for quite a while. He has just turned 50 and started asking himself, is this all there is? For quite a while now, he has been friendly with a woman at work. They sometimes go out for lunch and he feels he can talk about anything with her; he feels understood.
He came to see me because he realised he was close to falling in love with her and didn’t know what to do. He felt very guilty even thinking about having an affair. His wife would probably divorce him if she found out and his children would be devastated.
People usually don’t have affairs with the intention of hurting their partner, but the result can be extremely painful. The reality is that staying faithful to one person in a relationship can be difficult and challenging. However, a large percentage of affairs are not just about sex. Both men and women often start affairs because they don’t feel appreciated by their partners; they feel neglected or ignored and may crave intimacy. They enjoy the feeling of being wanted, needed and desired, and often are looking more for an emotional connection rather than just a sexual one.
So why do people have affairs?
When people feel trapped in a routine, when there isn’t much joy and fun anymore in a relationship, an affair can be an escape. Romance in their current relationship may be missing. There is a belief that women more often complain about lack of romance, but men feel it, too. Men don’t like their once sexy lover turning into a nagging wife and women often feel criticised, undervalued or just lonely or bored.
But one of the main reasons may be the fact that most people have unrealistic expectations about what a happy relationship looks like, and that they should be enjoying the kind of sex we see in movies or porn.
I believe there are times when an affair can rescue a marriage or relationship and can even make it stronger. Starting to understand an affair and how it happened can help provide clarity and give answers to the many questions a couple may feel are still unanswered. This is not about assigning blame, but a time to deconstruct the affair and find out where the roots of the infidelity started, so they can make decisions on how their relationship can go forward.
New York couples therapist Esther Perel – the author of The State of Affairs – Rethinking Infidelity lectures around the world on the subjects of love and sex. She used to ask her audiences if anyone had ever experienced an affair and, not surprisingly, usually no hands went up. But when she asked, “How many of you have been affected by infidelity in your lives?” many hands went up. Divorce used to be a taboo – now it’s infidelity that carries the new stigma.
Perel believes that “we need to create a safe space for productive conversation, where the multiplicity of experiences can be explored with compassion”. “Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships: what we expect, what we think, want, and what we feel entitled to.”
In her book she examines why people cheat and unpacks why affairs are so traumatic: they threaten our emotional security. It’s a must-read for anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on, or who simply wants a new framework for understanding relationships.
In the end, infidelity is usually about a whole lot more than sex.
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