WEBVTT

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Why do we cheat?

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And why do happy people cheat?

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And when we say "infidelity,"
what exactly do we mean?

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Is it a hookup, a love story,
paid sex, a chat room,

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a massage with a happy ending?

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Why do we think that men cheat
out of boredom and fear of intimacy,

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but women cheat out of loneliness
and hunger for intimacy?

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And is an affair always
the end of a relationship?

NOTE Paragraph

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For the past 10 years,
I have traveled the globe

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and worked extensively
with hundreds of couples

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who have been shattered by infidelity.

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There is one simple act of transgression

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that can rob a couple
of their relationship,

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their happiness and their
very identity: an affair.

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And yet, this extremely common
act is so poorly understood.

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So this talk is for anyone
who has ever loved.

NOTE Paragraph

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Adultery has existed
since marriage was invented,

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and so, too, the taboo against it.

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In fact, infidelity has a tenacity
that marriage can only envy,

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so much so, that this is
the only commandment

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that is repeated twice in the Bible:

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once for doing it, and once
just for thinking about it.

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(Laughter)

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So how do we reconcile
what is universally forbidden,

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yet universally practiced?

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, throughout history, men
practically had a license to cheat

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with little consequence,

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and supported by a host
of biological and evolutionary theories

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that justified their need to roam,

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so the double standard
is as old as adultery itself.

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But who knows what's really going on
under the sheets there, right?

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Because when it comes to sex,

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the pressure for men
is to boast and to exaggerate,

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but the pressure for women
is to hide, minimize and deny,

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which isn't surprising when you consider
that there are still nine countries

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where women can be killed for straying.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, monogamy used to be
one person for life.

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Today, monogamy is one person at a time.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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I mean, many of you probably have said,

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"I am monogamous in all my relationships."

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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We used to marry,

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and had sex for the first time.

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But now we marry,

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and we stop having sex with others.

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The fact is that monogamy
had nothing to do with love.

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Men relied on women's fidelity

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in order to know whose children these are,

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and who gets the cows when I die.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, everyone wants to know

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what percentage of people cheat.

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I've been asked that question
since I arrived at this conference.

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(Laughter)

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It applies to you.

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But the definition of infidelity
keeps on expanding:

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sexting, watching porn, staying
secretly active on dating apps.

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So because there is no
universally agreed-upon definition

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of what even constitutes an infidelity,

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estimates vary widely,
from 26 percent to 75 percent.

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But on top of it, we are
walking contradictions.

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So 95 percent of us will say
that it is terribly wrong

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for our partner to lie
about having an affair,

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but just about the same
amount of us will say

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that that's exactly what we
would do if we were having one.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, I like this definition
of an affair --

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it brings together the three key elements:

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a secretive relationship,
which is the core structure of an affair;

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an emotional connection
to one degree or another;

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and a sexual alchemy.

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And alchemy is the key word here,

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because the erotic frisson is such that
the kiss that you only imagine giving,

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can be as powerful and as enchanting

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as hours of actual lovemaking.

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As Marcel Proust said,

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it's our imagination that is responsible
for love, not the other person.

NOTE Paragraph

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So it's never been easier to cheat,

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and it's never been more
difficult to keep a secret.

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And never has infidelity exacted
such a psychological toll.

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When marriage was an economic enterprise,

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infidelity threatened
our economic security.

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But now that marriage
is a romantic arrangement,

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infidelity threatens
our emotional security.

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Ironically, we used to turn to adultery --

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that was the space where
we sought pure love.

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But now that we seek love in marriage,

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adultery destroys it.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, there are three ways that I think
infidelity hurts differently today.

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We have a romantic ideal
in which we turn to one person

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to fulfill an endless list of needs:

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to be my greatest lover, my best friend,

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the best parent, my trusted confidant,

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my emotional companion,
my intellectual equal.

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And I am it: I'm chosen, I'm unique,

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I'm indispensable, I'm irreplaceable,

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I'm the one.

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And infidelity tells me I'm not.

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It is the ultimate betrayal.

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Infidelity shatters
the grand ambition of love.

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But if throughout history,
infidelity has always been painful,

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today it is often traumatic,

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because it threatens our sense of self.

NOTE Paragraph

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So my patient Fernando, he's plagued.

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He goes on: "I thought I knew my life.

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I thought I knew who you were,
who we were as a couple, who I was.

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Now, I question everything."

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Infidelity -- a violation of trust,
a crisis of identity.

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"Can I ever trust you again?" he asks.

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"Can I ever trust anyone again?"

NOTE Paragraph

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And this is also what my patient
Heather is telling me,

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when she's talking to me
about her story with Nick.

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Married, two kids.

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Nick just left on a business trip,

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and Heather is playing
on his iPad with the boys,

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when she sees a message
appear on the screen:

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"Can't wait to see you."

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Strange, she thinks,
we just saw each other.

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And then another message:

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"Can't wait to hold you in my arms."

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And Heather realizes

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these are not for her.

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She also tells me
that her father had affairs,

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but her mother, she found
one little receipt in the pocket,

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and a little bit of lipstick
on the collar.

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Heather, she goes digging,

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and she finds hundreds of messages,

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and photos exchanged
and desires expressed.

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The vivid details
of Nick's two-year affair

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unfold in front of her in real time,

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And it made me think:

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Affairs in the digital age
are death by a thousand cuts.

NOTE Paragraph

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But then we have another paradox
that we're dealing with these days.

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Because of this romantic ideal,

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we are relying on our partner's
fidelity with a unique fervor.

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But we also have never
been more inclined to stray,

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and not because we have new desires today,

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but because we live in an era

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where we feel that we are
entitled to pursue our desires,

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because this is the culture
where I deserve to be happy.

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And if we used to divorce
because we were unhappy,

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today we divorce
because we could be happier.

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And if divorce carried all the shame,

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today, choosing to stay when you can leave

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is the new shame.

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So Heather, she can't talk to her friends

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because she's afraid that they
will judge her for still loving Nick,

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and everywhere she turns,
she gets the same advice:

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Leave him. Throw the dog on the curb.

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And if the situation were reversed,
Nick would be in the same situation.

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Staying is the new shame.

NOTE Paragraph

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So if we can divorce,

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why do we still have affairs?

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Now, the typical assumption
is that if someone cheats,

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either there's something wrong
in your relationship or wrong with you.

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But millions of people
can't all be pathological.

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The logic goes like this: If you
have everything you need at home,

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then there is no need
to go looking elsewhere,

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assuming that there is such
a thing as a perfect marriage

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that will inoculate us against wanderlust.

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But what if passion
has a finite shelf life?

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What if there are things
that even a good relationship

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can never provide?

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If even happy people cheat,

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what is it about?

NOTE Paragraph

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The vast majority of people
that I actually work with

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are not at all chronic philanderers.

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They are often people who are
deeply monogamous in their beliefs,

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and at least for their partner.

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But they find themselves in a conflict

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between their values and their behavior.

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They often are people who have
actually been faithful for decades,

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but one day they cross a line

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that they never thought they would cross,

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and at the risk of losing everything.

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But for a glimmer of what?

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Affairs are an act of betrayal,

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and they are also an expression
of longing and loss.

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At the heart of an affair,
you will often find

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a longing and a yearning
for an emotional connection,

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for novelty, for freedom,
for autonomy, for sexual intensity,

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a wish to recapture
lost parts of ourselves

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or an attempt to bring back
vitality in the face of loss and tragedy.

NOTE Paragraph

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I'm thinking about
another patient of mine, Priya,

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who is blissfully married,

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loves her husband,

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and would never want to hurt the man.

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But she also tells me

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that she's always done
what was expected of her:

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good girl, good wife, good mother,

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taking care of her immigrant parents.

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Priya, she fell for the arborist
who removed the tree from her yard

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after Hurricane Sandy.

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And with his truck and his tattoos,
he's quite the opposite of her.

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But at 47, Priya's affair is about
the adolescence that she never had.

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And her story highlights for me
that when we seek the gaze of another,

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it isn't always our partner
that we are turning away from,

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but the person that
we have ourselves become.

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And it isn't so much that we're
looking for another person,

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as much as we are
looking for another self.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, all over the world,

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there is one word that people
who have affairs always tell me.

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They feel alive.

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And they often will tell me
stories of recent losses --

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of a parent who died,

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and a friend that went too soon,

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and bad news at the doctor.

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Death and mortality often live
in the shadow of an affair,

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because they raise these questions.

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Is this it? Is there more?

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Am I going on for another
25 years like this?

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Will I ever feel that thing again?

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And it has led me to think
that perhaps these questions

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are the ones that propel
people to cross the line,

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and that some affairs are
an attempt to beat back deadness,

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in an antidote to death.

NOTE Paragraph

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And contrary to what you may think,

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affairs are way less about sex,
and a lot more about desire:

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desire for attention,
desire to feel special,

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desire to feel important.

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And the very structure of an affair,

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the fact that you can
never have your lover,

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keeps you wanting.

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That in itself is a desire machine,

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because the incompleteness, the ambiguity,

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keeps you wanting
that which you can't have.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now some of you probably think

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that affairs don't happen
in open relationships,

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but they do.

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First of all, the conversation
about monogamy is not the same

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as the conversation about infidelity.

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But the fact is that it seems
that even when we have

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the freedom to have other sexual partners,

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we still seem to be lured
by the power of the forbidden,

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that if we do that which
we are not supposed to do,

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then we feel like we are really
doing what we want to.

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And I've also told
quite a few of my patients

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that if they could bring
into their relationships

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one tenth of the boldness,
the imagination and the verve

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that they put into their affairs,

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they probably would never need to see me.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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So how do we heal from an affair?

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Desire runs deep.

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Betrayal runs deep.

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But it can be healed.

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And some affairs are death knells

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for relationships that were
already dying on the vine.

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But others will jolt us
into new possibilities.

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The fact is, the majority of couples

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who have experienced
affairs stay together.

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But some of them will merely survive,

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and others will actually be able
to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

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They'll be able to turn this
into a generative experience.

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And I'm actually thinking even
more so for the deceived partner,

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who will often say,

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"You think I didn't want more?

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But I'm not the one who did it."

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But now that the affair is exposed,

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they, too, get to claim more,

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and they no longer have
to uphold the status quo

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that may not have been working
for them that well, either.

NOTE Paragraph

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I've noticed that a lot of couples,

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in the immediate aftermath of an affair,

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because of this new disorder
that may actually lead to a new order,

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will have depths of conversations
with honesty and openness

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that they haven't had in decades.

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And, partners who were
sexually indifferent

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find themselves suddenly
so lustfully voracious,

00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:07.814
they don't know where it's coming from.

00:16:08.568 --> 00:16:12.521
Something about the fear
of loss will rekindle desire,

00:16:12.521 --> 00:16:15.840
and make way for an entirely
new kind of truth.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:18.133 --> 00:16:21.004
So when an affair is exposed,

00:16:21.004 --> 00:16:24.165
what are some of the specific things
that couples can do?

00:16:26.133 --> 00:16:30.204
We know from trauma that healing begins

00:16:30.204 --> 00:16:34.196
when the perpetrator
acknowledges their wrongdoing.

00:16:35.339 --> 00:16:39.050
So for the partner who had the affair,

00:16:39.050 --> 00:16:40.582
for Nick,

00:16:40.582 --> 00:16:42.387
one thing is to end the affair,

00:16:42.387 --> 00:16:47.109
but the other is the essential,
important act of expressing

00:16:47.109 --> 00:16:50.315
guilt and remorse for hurting his wife.

00:16:50.889 --> 00:16:52.264
But the truth is

00:16:52.264 --> 00:16:55.365
that I have noticed that quite a lot
of people who have affairs

00:16:55.365 --> 00:16:58.463
may feel terribly guilty
for hurting their partner,

00:16:58.463 --> 00:17:01.676
but they don't feel guilty
for the experience of the affair itself.

00:17:02.135 --> 00:17:03.976
And that distinction is important.

00:17:05.230 --> 00:17:08.856
And Nick, he needs to hold
vigil for the relationship.

00:17:09.253 --> 00:17:12.326
He needs to become, for a while,
the protector of the boundaries.

00:17:12.326 --> 00:17:14.949
It's his responsibility to bring it up,

00:17:14.949 --> 00:17:16.929
because if he thinks about it,

00:17:16.929 --> 00:17:19.939
he can relieve Heather from the obsession,

00:17:19.939 --> 00:17:23.149
and from having to make sure
that the affair isn't forgotten,

00:17:23.149 --> 00:17:26.332
and that in itself
begins to restore trust.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:27.570 --> 00:17:29.429
But for Heather,

00:17:29.429 --> 00:17:31.174
or deceived partners,

00:17:31.174 --> 00:17:36.512
it is essential to do things
that bring back a sense of self-worth,

00:17:36.512 --> 00:17:40.245
to surround oneself with love
and with friends and activities

00:17:40.249 --> 00:17:43.652
that give back joy
and meaning and identity.

00:17:43.936 --> 00:17:45.869
But even more important,

00:17:45.869 --> 00:17:50.772
is to curb the curiosity
to mine for the sordid details --

00:17:50.772 --> 00:17:52.969
Where were you? Where did you do it?

00:17:52.969 --> 00:17:55.991
How often? Is she better
than me in bed? --

00:17:55.991 --> 00:17:58.475
questions that only inflict more pain,

00:17:58.475 --> 00:17:59.959
and keep you awake at night.

00:18:00.674 --> 00:18:05.350
And instead, switch to what I call
the investigative questions,

00:18:05.350 --> 00:18:08.650
the ones that mine
the meaning and the motives --

00:18:08.654 --> 00:18:11.127
What did this affair mean for you?

00:18:11.127 --> 00:18:13.899
What were you able to express
or experience there

00:18:13.899 --> 00:18:16.154
that you could no longer do with me?

00:18:16.154 --> 00:18:19.186
What was it like for you
when you came home?

00:18:19.186 --> 00:18:22.585
What is it about us that you value?

00:18:22.585 --> 00:18:24.737
Are you pleased this is over?

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:26.404 --> 00:18:30.725
Every affair will redefine a relationship,

00:18:30.725 --> 00:18:33.607
and every couple will determine

00:18:33.607 --> 00:18:36.142
what the legacy of the affair will be.

00:18:37.649 --> 00:18:41.411
But affairs are here to stay,
and they're not going away.

00:18:42.316 --> 00:18:44.959
And the dilemmas of love and desire,

00:18:44.959 --> 00:18:50.929
they don't yield just simple answers
of black and white and good and bad,

00:18:50.929 --> 00:18:52.903
and victim and perpetrator.

00:18:54.221 --> 00:18:58.296
Betrayal in a relationship
comes in many forms.

00:18:58.296 --> 00:19:00.650
There are many ways
that we betray our partner:

00:19:00.650 --> 00:19:02.819
with contempt, with neglect,

00:19:02.819 --> 00:19:05.292
with indifference, with violence.

00:19:05.999 --> 00:19:09.437
Sexual betrayal is only
one way to hurt a partner.

00:19:09.437 --> 00:19:12.041
In other words, the victim of an affair

00:19:12.041 --> 00:19:14.983
is not always the victim of the marriage.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:17.840 --> 00:19:20.048
Now, you've listened to me,

00:19:20.048 --> 00:19:22.423
and I know what you're thinking:

00:19:22.423 --> 00:19:26.197
She has a French accent,
she must be pro-affair.

00:19:26.697 --> 00:19:29.999
(Laughter)

00:19:31.761 --> 00:19:33.265
So, you're wrong.

00:19:33.619 --> 00:19:35.174
I am not French.

00:19:35.666 --> 00:19:38.119
(Laughter)

00:19:38.143 --> 00:19:41.023
(Applause)

00:19:41.602 --> 00:19:43.269
And I'm not pro-affair.

00:19:44.674 --> 00:19:49.058
But because I think that good
can come out of an affair,

00:19:49.058 --> 00:19:52.389
I have often been asked
this very strange question:

00:19:52.413 --> 00:19:54.150
Would I ever recommend it?

00:19:55.514 --> 00:19:58.505
Now, I would no more
recommend you have an affair

00:19:58.505 --> 00:20:01.049
than I would recommend you have cancer,

00:20:01.049 --> 00:20:03.752
and yet we know that people
who have been ill

00:20:03.752 --> 00:20:07.950
often talk about how their illness
has yielded them a new perspective.

00:20:08.569 --> 00:20:11.906
The main question that I've been asked
since I arrived at this conference

00:20:11.906 --> 00:20:15.417
when I said I would talk
about infidelity is, for or against?

00:20:16.488 --> 00:20:17.749
I said, "Yes."

00:20:18.162 --> 00:20:20.583
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:21.868 --> 00:20:25.505
I look at affairs from a dual perspective:

00:20:25.505 --> 00:20:29.153
hurt and betrayal on one side,

00:20:29.153 --> 00:20:32.509
growth and self-discovery on the other --

00:20:32.509 --> 00:20:35.605
what it did to you,
and what it meant for me.

00:20:36.621 --> 00:20:41.289
And so when a couple comes to me
in the aftermath of an affair

00:20:41.289 --> 00:20:43.092
that has been revealed,

00:20:43.092 --> 00:20:45.420
I will often tell them this:

00:20:45.420 --> 00:20:47.825
Today in the West,

00:20:47.825 --> 00:20:52.704
most of us are going to have
two or three relationships

00:20:52.704 --> 00:20:54.403
or marriages,

00:20:54.403 --> 00:20:57.538
and some of us are going
to do it with the same person.

00:20:58.666 --> 00:21:00.911
Your first marriage is over.

00:21:01.633 --> 00:21:04.474
Would you like to create
a second one together?

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:05.164 --> 00:21:06.595
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:06.619 --> 00:21:13.253
(Applause)