-
Not Synced
Why do we cheat?
-
Not Synced
And why do happy people cheat?
-
Not Synced
And when we say "infidelity,"
-
Not Synced
what exactly do we mean?
-
Not Synced
Is it a hookup, a love story,
-
Not Synced
hate sex, a chat room,
-
Not Synced
a massage with happy endings?
-
Not Synced
Why do we think that men cheat
-
Not Synced
out of boredom and fear of intimacy,
-
Not Synced
but women cheat out of loneliness
-
Not Synced
and hunger for intimacy?
-
Not Synced
And is an affair always
the end of a relationship?
-
Not Synced
For the past 10 years,
-
Not Synced
I have traveled the globe
-
Not Synced
and worked extensively
-
Not Synced
with hundreds of couples
who have been shattered by infidelity.
-
Not Synced
There is one simple act of transgression
-
Not Synced
that can rob a couple
-
Not Synced
from their relationship, their happiness,
-
Not Synced
and their very identity: an affair.
-
Not Synced
And yet, this extremely common act
-
Not Synced
is so poorly understood.
-
Not Synced
So this talk is for anyone
who has ever loved.
-
Not Synced
Adultery has existed
since marriage was invented,
-
Not Synced
and so to the taboo against it.
-
Not Synced
In fact, infidelity has a tenacity
-
Not Synced
that marriage can only envy,
-
Not Synced
so much so that this is
the only commandment
-
Not Synced
that is repeated twice in the Bible:
-
Not Synced
once for doing it,
-
Not Synced
and once just for thinking about it.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
So how do we reconcile
-
Not Synced
what is universally forbidden
-
Not Synced
yet universally practiced?
-
Not Synced
Now, throughout history,
-
Not Synced
men practically had a license to cheat
-
Not Synced
with little consequence,
-
Not Synced
and supported by a host
of biological and evolutionary theories
-
Not Synced
that justified their need to roam,
-
Not Synced
so the double standard
is as old as adultery itself.
-
Not Synced
But who knows what's really going on
-
Not Synced
under the sheets there, right?
-
Not Synced
Because when it comes to sex,
-
Not Synced
the pressure for men
-
Not Synced
is to boast and to exaggerate,
-
Not Synced
but the pressure for women
-
Not Synced
is to hide, minimize, and deny,
-
Not Synced
which isn't surprising when you consider
-
Not Synced
that there are still nine countries
-
Not Synced
where women can be killed for straying.
-
Not Synced
Now, monogamy used to be
one person for life.
-
Not Synced
Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter) (Applause)
-
Not Synced
I mean, many of you probably have said,
-
Not Synced
"I am monogamous in all my relationships."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
We used to marry
-
Not Synced
and have sex for the first time,
-
Not Synced
but now we marry
-
Not Synced
and we stop having sex with others.
-
Not Synced
The fact is that monogamy
-
Not Synced
had nothing to do with love.
-
Not Synced
Men relied on women's fidelity
-
Not Synced
in order to know whose children these are
-
Not Synced
and who gets the cows when I die.
-
Not Synced
Now, everyone wants to know
-
Not Synced
what percentage of people cheat.
-
Not Synced
I've been asked that question
since I arrived at this conference.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
It applies to you.
-
Not Synced
But the definition of infidelity
-
Not Synced
keeps on expanding:
-
Not Synced
sexting, watching porn,
-
Not Synced
staying secretly active on dating apps.
-
Not Synced
So because there is no
universally agreed upon definition
-
Not Synced
of what even constitutes an infidelity,
-
Not Synced
estimates very widely,
-
Not Synced
from 26 percent to 75 percent.
-
Not Synced
But on top of it,
we are walking contradictions,
-
Not Synced
so 95 percent of us will say
that it is terribly wrong
-
Not Synced
for our partner to lie
about having an affair,
-
Not Synced
but just about the same
amount of us will say
-
Not Synced
that that's exactly what we would do
if we were having one.
-
Not Synced
Now, I like this definition of an affair.
-
Not Synced
It brings together the three key elements:
-
Not Synced
a secretive relationship,
-
Not Synced
which is the core structure of an affair;
-
Not Synced
an emotional connection
to one degree or another;
-
Not Synced
and a sexual alchemy.
-
Not Synced
And alchemy is the key word here,
-
Not Synced
because the erotic frisson is such
-
Not Synced
that the kiss that you only imagine giving
-
Not Synced
can be as powerful and as enchanting
-
Not Synced
as hours of actual lovemaking.
-
Not Synced
As Marcel Proust said,
-
Not Synced
it's our imagination that is
responsible for love,
-
Not Synced
not the other person.
-
Not Synced
So it's never been easier to cheat,
-
Not Synced
and it's never been more difficult
-
Not Synced
to keep a secret.
-
Not Synced
And never has infidelity exacted
such a psychological toll.
-
Not Synced
When marriage was an economic enterprise,
-
Not Synced
infidelity threatened
our economic security,
-
Not Synced
but now that marriage
is a romantic arrangement,
-
Not Synced
infidelity threatens
our emotional security.
-
Not Synced
Ironically, we used to turn to adultery.
-
Not Synced
That was the space
where we sought pure love.
-
Not Synced
But now that we seek love in marriage,
-
Not Synced
adultery destroys it.
-
Not Synced
Now, there are three ways that I think
infidelity hurts differently today.
-
Not Synced
We have a romantic ideal
-
Not Synced
in which we turn to one person
-
Not Synced
to fulfill an endless list of needs:
-
Not Synced
to be my greatest lover, my best friend,
-
Not Synced
the best parent, my trusted confidante,
-
Not Synced
my emotional companion,
my intellectual equal.
-
Not Synced
And I am it: I am chosen, I am unique,
-
Not Synced
I am indispensable, I am irreplaceable,
-
Not Synced
I am the one.
-
Not Synced
And infidelity tells me I'm not.
-
Not Synced
It is the ultimate betrayal.
-
Not Synced
Infidelity shatters
the grand ambition of love.
-
Not Synced
But if, throughout history,
-
Not Synced
infidelity has always been painful,
-
Not Synced
today it is often traumatic,
-
Not Synced
because it threatens our sense of self.
-
Not Synced
So my patient Fernando, he's plagued.
-
Not Synced
He goes on. "I thought I knew my life.
-
Not Synced
I thought I knew who you were,
who we were as a couple, who I was.
-
Not Synced
Now, I question everything."
-
Not Synced
Infidelity, a violation of trust,
-
Not Synced
a crisis of identity.
-
Not Synced
"Can I ever trust you again?" he asks.
-
Not Synced
"Can I ever trust anyone again?"
-
Not Synced
And this is also what
my patient Heather is telling me
-
Not Synced
when she's talking to me
about her story with Nick.
-
Not Synced
Married, two kids.
-
Not Synced
Nick just left on a business trip,
-
Not Synced
and Heather is playing
on his iPad with the boys
-
Not Synced
when she sees a message
appear on the screen:
-
Not Synced
"Can't wait to see you."
-
Not Synced
Strange, she thinks,
-
Not Synced
we just saw each other.
-
Not Synced
And then another message:
-
Not Synced
"Can't wait to hold you in my arms."
-
Not Synced
And Heather realizes
-
Not Synced
these are not for her.
-
Not Synced
She also tells me
that her father had affairs,
-
Not Synced
but her mother, she found
one little receipt in the pocket,
-
Not Synced
and a little bit of lipstick
on the collar.
-
Not Synced
Heather, she goes digging,
-
Not Synced
and she finds hundreds of messages
-
Not Synced
and photos exchanged
and desires expressed.
-
Not Synced
The vivid details
of Nick's two year affair
-
Not Synced
unfold in front of her in real time,
-
Not Synced
and it made me think:
-
Not Synced
affairs in the digital age
are death by a thousand cuts.
-
Not Synced
But then we have another paradox
that we're dealing with these days.
-
Not Synced
Because of this romantic ideal,
-
Not Synced
we are relying on our partner's fidelity
-
Not Synced
with a unique fervor,
-
Not Synced
but we also have never
been more inclined to stray,
-
Not Synced
and not because we have new desires today,
-
Not Synced
but because we live
in an era where we feel
-
Not Synced
that we are entitled
to pursue our desires,
-
Not Synced
because this is the culture
where I deserve to be happy.
-
Not Synced
And if we used to divorce
because we are unhappy,
-
Not Synced
today we divorce because
we could be happier.
-
Not Synced
And if divorce carried all the shame,
-
Not Synced
today, choosing to stay
when you can leave
-
Not Synced
is the new shame.
-
Not Synced
So Heather, she can't talk to her friends
-
Not Synced
because she's afraid that they
will judge her for still loving Nick,
-
Not Synced
and everywhere she turns,
-
Not Synced
she gets the same advice:
-
Not Synced
leave him, throw the dog on the curb.
-
Not Synced
And if the situation was reversed,
Nick would be in the same situation.
-
Not Synced
Staying is the new shame.
-
Not Synced
So if we can divorce,
-
Not Synced
why do we still have affairs?
-
Not Synced
Now, the typical assumption
-
Not Synced
is that if someone cheats,
-
Not Synced
either there's something wrong
in your relationship or wrong with you.
-
Not Synced
But millions of people
can't all be pathological.
-
Not Synced
The logic goes like this:
if you have everything you need at home,
-
Not Synced
then there is no need
to go looking elsewhere,
-
Not Synced
assuming that there is such a thing
as a perfect marriage
-
Not Synced
that will inoculate us against wanderlust.
-
Not Synced
But what if passion
has a finite shelf life?
-
Not Synced
What if there are things
that even a good relationship
-
Not Synced
can never provide?
-
Not Synced
If even happy people cheat,
-
Not Synced
what is it about?
-
Not Synced
The vast majority of people
that I actually work with
-
Not Synced
are not at all chronic philanderers.
-
Not Synced
They are often people
-
Not Synced
who are deeply monogamous
in their beliefs,
-
Not Synced
and at least for their partners.
-
Not Synced
But they find themselves in a conflict
-
Not Synced
between their values and their behavior.
-
Not Synced
They often are people who have actually
-
Not Synced
been faithful for decades,
-
Not Synced
but one day they cross a line
-
Not Synced
that they never thought they would cross,
-
Not Synced
and at the risk of losing everything,
-
Not Synced
but for a glimmer of what?
-
Not Synced
Affairs are an act of betrayal
-
Not Synced
and they are also an expression
of longing and loss.
-
Not Synced
At the heart of an affair,
-
Not Synced
you will often find
-
Not Synced
a longing and a yearning
-
Not Synced
for an emotional connection,
-
Not Synced
for novelty, for freedom, for autonomy,
-
Not Synced
for sexual intensity,
-
Not Synced
a wish to recapture
lost parts of ourselves
-
Not Synced
or an attempt to bring back
vitality in the face of loss and tragedy.
-
Not Synced
Now I'm think about
another patient of mine, Priya,
-
Not Synced
who is blissfully married,
-
Not Synced
loves her husband,
-
Not Synced
and would never want to hurt the man,
-
Not Synced
but she also tells me
-
Not Synced
that she's always done
what was expected of her:
-
Not Synced
good girl, good wife, good mother,
-
Not Synced
taking care of her immigrant parents.
-
Not Synced
Priya, she fell for the arborist
-
Not Synced
who removed the tree from her yard
after Hurricane Sandy,
-
Not Synced
and with his truck and his tattoos,
-
Not Synced
he's quite the opposite of her.
-
Not Synced
But at 47, Priya's affair is about
the adolescence that she never had,
-
Not Synced
and her story highlights for me
-
Not Synced
that when we seek the gaze of another,
-
Not Synced
it isn't always our partner
-
Not Synced
that we are turning away from,
-
Not Synced
but the person that
we have ourselves become.
-
Not Synced
And it isn't so much that we're
looking for another person
-
Not Synced
as much as we are looking
-
Not Synced
for another self.
-
Not Synced
Now, all over the world,
-
Not Synced
there is one word that people
who have affairs always tell me.
-
Not Synced
They feel alive.
-
Not Synced
And they often will tell me stories
-
Not Synced
of recent losses,
-
Not Synced
of a parent who died,
-
Not Synced
and a friend that went too soon,
-
Not Synced
and bad news at the doctor.
-
Not Synced
Death and mortality often live
in the shadow of an affair,
-
Not Synced
because they raise these questions.
-
Not Synced
Is this it? Is there more?
-
Not Synced
Am I going on for another
25 years like this?
-
Not Synced
Will I ever feel that thing again?
-
Not Synced
And it has led me to think
-
Not Synced
that perhaps these questions
-
Not Synced
are the ones that propel people
-
Not Synced
to cross the line,
-
Not Synced
and that some affairs are an attempt
to beat back deadness
-
Not Synced
and an antidote to death.
-
Not Synced
And contrary to what you may think,
-
Not Synced
affairs are way less about sex
-
Not Synced
and a lot more about desire:
-
Not Synced
desire for attention,
desire to feel special,
-
Not Synced
desire to feel important.
-
Not Synced
And the very structure of an affair,
-
Not Synced
the fact that you can
never have your lover,
-
Not Synced
keeps you wanting.
-
Not Synced
That in itself is a desire machine,
-
Not Synced
because the incompleteness,
the ambiguity,
-
Not Synced
keeps you wanting
that which you cannot have.
-
Not Synced
Now some of you probably think
-
Not Synced
that affairs don't happen
-
Not Synced
in open relationships, but they do.
-
Not Synced
First of all, the conversation
about monogamy
-
Not Synced
is not the same as
the conversation about infidelity.
-
Not Synced
But the fact is that it seems
that even when we have
-
Not Synced
the freedom to have other sexual partners,
-
Not Synced
we still seem to be lured
by the power of the forbidden,
-
Not Synced
that if we do that which we
are not supposed to do,
-
Not Synced
then we feel like we are really
doing what we what.
-
Not Synced
And I've also told
quite a few of my patients
-
Not Synced
that if they could bring
-
Not Synced
into their relationships
-
Not Synced
one tenth of the boldness,
the imagination, and the verve
-
Not Synced
that they put into their affairs,
-
Not Synced
they probably would never need to see me.
-
Not Synced
So how do we heal from an affair?
-
Not Synced
Desire runs deep.
-
Not Synced
Betrayal runs deep.
-
Not Synced
But it can be healed.
-
Not Synced
And some affairs are death knells
-
Not Synced
for relationships that were
already dying on the vine,
-
Not Synced
but others will jolt us
into new possibilities.
-
Not Synced
The fact is, the majority of couples
-
Not Synced
who have experienced affairs
stay together,
-
Not Synced
but some of them will merely survive,
-
Not Synced
and others will actually be able
to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
-
Not Synced
They'll be able to turn this
into a generative experience.
-
Not Synced
And I'm actually thinking even more so
for the deceived partner,
-
Not Synced
who will often say,
-
Not Synced
"You think I didn't want more?
-
Not Synced
But I'm not the one who did it."
-
Not Synced
But now that the affair is exposed,
-
Not Synced
they too get to claim more,
-
Not Synced
and they no longer have
to uphold the status quo
-
Not Synced
that may not have been working
that well for them either.
-
Not Synced
I've noticed that a lot of couples
-
Not Synced
in the immediate aftermath of an affair,
-
Not Synced
because of this new disorder
-
Not Synced
that may actually lead to a new order,
-
Not Synced
will have depths of conversations
with honesty and openness
-
Not Synced
that they haven't had in decades,
-
Not Synced
and partners who were sexually indifferent
-
Not Synced
find themselves suddenly
so lustfully voracious,
-
Not Synced
they don't know where it's coming from.
-
Not Synced
Something about the fear of loss
-
Not Synced
will rekindle desire
-
Not Synced
and make way for
an entirely new kind of truth.
-
Not Synced
So when an affair is exposed,
-
Not Synced
what are some of the specific things
that couples can do?
-
Not Synced
We know from trauma
-
Not Synced
that healing begins
-
Not Synced
when the perpetrator
acknowledges their wrongdoing.
-
Not Synced
So for the partner who had the affair,
-
Not Synced
for Nick,
-
Not Synced
one thing is to end the affair,
-
Not Synced
but the other is the essential,
important act of expressing
-
Not Synced
guilt and remorse for hurting his wife.
-
Not Synced
But the truth is
-
Not Synced
that I have noticed that quite a lot
of people who have affairs
-
Not Synced
may feel terribly guilty
for hurting their partner,
-
Not Synced
but they don't feel guilty
for the experience of the affair itself.
-
Not Synced
And that distinction is important.
-
Not Synced
And Nick, he needs to hold vigil
for the relationship.
-
Not Synced
He needs to become for a while
the protector of the boundaries.
-
Not Synced
It's his responsibility to bring it up,
-
Not Synced
because if he thinks about it,
-
Not Synced
he can relieve Heather
from the obsession,
-
Not Synced
and from having to make sure
that the affair isn't forgotten,
-
Not Synced
and that in itself
begins to restore trust.
-
Not Synced
But Heather,
-
Not Synced
or deceived partners,
-
Not Synced
it is essential to do things
-
Not Synced
that bring back a sense of self-worth,
-
Not Synced
to surround oneself with love
and with friends and activities
-
Not Synced
that give back joy
and meaning and identity.
-
Not Synced
But even more important
-
Not Synced
is to curb the curiosity
to mine for the sordid details
-
Not Synced
-- Where were you? Where did you do it?
-
Not Synced
How often? Is she better
than me in bed? --
-
Not Synced
questions that only inflict more pain
-
Not Synced
and keep you awake at night,
-
Not Synced
and instead switch to what I call
the investigative questions,
-
Not Synced
the ones that mine
the meaning and the motives.
-
Not Synced
What did this affair mean for you?
-
Not Synced
What were you able to express
or experience there
-
Not Synced
that you could no longer do with me?
-
Not Synced
What was it like for you
when you came home?
-
Not Synced
What is it about us that you value?
-
Not Synced
Are you pleased this is over?
-
Not Synced
Every affair will redefine a relationship,
-
Not Synced
and every couple will determine
-
Not Synced
what the legacy of the affair will be.
-
Not Synced
But affairs are here to stay,
-
Not Synced
and they're not going away,
-
Not Synced
and the dilemmas of love and desire,
-
Not Synced
they don't yield just simple answers
-
Not Synced
of black and white and good and bad
-
Not Synced
and victim and perpetrator.
-
Not Synced
Betrayal in a relationship
comes in many forms.
-
Not Synced
There are many ways
that we betray our partner:
-
Not Synced
with contempt, with neglect,
-
Not Synced
with indifference, with violence.
-
Not Synced
Sexual betrayal is only
one way to hurt a partner.
-
Not Synced
In other words, the victim of an affair
-
Not Synced
is not always the victim of the marriage.
-
Not Synced
Now, you've listened to me,
-
Not Synced
and I know what you're thinking:
-
Not Synced
she has a French accent,
-
Not Synced
she must be pro-affair.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
So you're wrong.
-
Not Synced
I am not French.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter) (Applause)
-
Not Synced
And I'm not pro-affair.
-
Not Synced
But because I think
-
Not Synced
that good can come out of an affair,
-
Not Synced
I have often been asked
this very strange question:
-
Not Synced
would I ever recommend it?
-
Not Synced
Now, I would no more recommend
you to have an affair
-
Not Synced
than I would recommend you to have cancer,
-
Not Synced
and yet we know that people
who have been ill
-
Not Synced
often talk about their illness
has yielded them a new perspective.
-
Not Synced
The main question that I've been asked
since I arrived at this conference
-
Not Synced
when I said I would talk
about infidelity is, for or against?
-
Not Synced
I said, yes.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
I look at affairs from a dual perspective:
-
Not Synced
hurt and betrayal on one side,
-
Not Synced
growth and self-discovery on the other,
-
Not Synced
what it did to you
and what it meant for me.
-
Not Synced
And so when a couple comes to me
-
Not Synced
in the aftermath of an affair
-
Not Synced
that has been revealed,
-
Not Synced
I will often tell them this:
-
Not Synced
today in the West,
-
Not Synced
most of us are going to have
two or three relationships
-
Not Synced
or marriages,
-
Not Synced
and some of us are going
to do it with the same person.
-
Not Synced
You first marriage is over.
-
Not Synced
Would you like to create
a second one together?
-
Not Synced
Thank you.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)