Rethinking Infidelity: Skye C.

Cleary Interviews Esther Perel

Skye C. Cleary interviews Esther Perel
OCTOBER 28, 2017

IN A 1923 poem by the Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran, he

writes:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
 Almost 100 years later, Belgian relationship therapist Esther
Perel applies similar thinking to adult relationships in her second
book, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity: “Our partners
do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to
renew — or not.” This approach, she says, doesn’t compromise
the commitment, but rather encourages us not to take our
partners for granted. There are many ways spouses disengage
from one another, and having a secret affair can be one of the
most devastating. The State of Affairs takes a fresh look at
infidelity, broadening the focus from the havoc it wreaks within
a committed relationship to consider also why people do it, what
it means to them, and why breaking up is the expected response
to duplicity — but not necessarily the wisest one.
I met with Perel on “the couch” — a very comfortable sofa
where her clients open up to her about their deepest secrets and
betrayals — in her New York City office, steps from The Museum
of Sex, where we discussed adultery and existential crises.
¤
SKYE C. CLEARY: The subtitle of your book is “Rethinking
Infidelity.” Why do we need to rethink it, and why now?
ESTHER PEREL: If I ask a group of people, “How many of
you have been affected by infidelity in your life?” about 85
percent will raise their hand. Infidelity is not just a twosome
story. It’s an experience that affects many people — children,
siblings, friends, colleagues, wives, husbands, and lovers —and
yet it is shrouded in secrecy, filled with shame, and often
addressed with major judgment. That’s not helpful to the people
who are actually experiencing it — or to society as a whole.
There is another conversation to be had about infidelity that
is less judgmental, less polarizing, and that integrates a dual
perspective. Affairs are about hurt and betrayal, but they are also
about longing and loss and self-seeking. An affair is about what
it did to you, as well as what it meant to me. Sometimes the
affair has nothing to do with the one who has been cheated on
and that can be rather freeing. It doesn’t hurt less, but it does
give the affair a different meaning. In the arts, there are many
books and operas about both sides: the person who has been
scorned or jilted, and about the person who is having the affair.
These dualities have been missing in psychology. Modern
psychology forgot about the story of the affair because it was
preoccupied with the story of the marriage. The story of the affair
needs to be integrated back.
As for why now? Part of why we are talking about infidelity
more today is because women have begun to close the gender
gap. When it was men doing what men do — and what they had
the license to do — there was no need to talk about it because it
was the normal social order. It has been a massive double
standard. Just think: There has never been such thing as the
“other man”; it’s only ever the “other woman.” The conversation
about infidelity today matches the conversation about virginity
50 years ago.
Infidelity is also taking a ride on the more individualistic
entitled self-fulfillment narrative of our contemporary life. Desire
has become central in our consumer society as well as our
personal lives. People feel like they’re entitled to happiness, such
as at work in the desire for job satisfaction, as well as in
relationships. It’s not so much that people are unhappy, but
rather they think that they could be happier and therefore some
think they deserve to have an affair.

Why did you decide to write about infidelity?

I began thinking about it way back when I was writing my
first book, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence,
which was around the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
There, I posed the question as to why the United States is so
tolerant of multiple divorces and so intransigent about affairs.
The rest of the world is more family-oriented, so it has always
opted for the other way around — compromising on infidelity and
preserving the family — courtesy of women. In the United
States, infidelity has become such a deal breaker and dominant
cause for divorce, and there is a real hunger to find another way
to look at it.
I am often asked: Why, if I believe in the strength of
relationships, did I write a book about one of the worst things
that can happen in one? I think we learn the best lessons when
things go wrong. The moments when we’re challenged with
adversity — with major fractures in the stories of our lives — are
the moments when we’re forced to look into ourselves and our
relationships. To understand trust, we have to understand
distrust. To understand loyalty, fidelity, and pride, we have to
understand betrayal, shame, and infidelity. To understand
modern infidelity, we must understand modern marriage. The
State of Affairs is not just a book about infidelity; it speaks to
the importance of aliveness and vitality in relationships through
the lens of affairs.

Why is infidelity the ultimate betrayal? Why is it more

taboo than other transgressions, such as abuse or
neglect?
Today most of us in the West arrived at marriage after years
of sexual nomadism. So, when you decide to close the gates, it
affirms your choice that you have found “The One.” Choosing
between two people in a village is very different from choosing
among thousands of people on Tinder. “The One” becomes the
person for whom you are willing to delete all your apps and to
forgo all your other possibilities in a society flooded with
options — or at least the pretense of options.
The essence of relationships today is built on emotional and
sexual exclusivity. Exclusivity has always been the sacred cow of
the romantic ideal, but our social context has changed. In the
past, our spouse was rarely the person with whom we shared our
deepest inner life with — or at least it was never part of the
expectation. For those conversations, we confided in priests,
neighbors, friends, mentors, or siblings. In the last 20 years, our
social capital has dropped significantly and spouses are now
supposed to give each other what once an entire community
used to provide: belonging, continuity, and identity. Also, all the
reasons why we would want to have an affair should have been
removed: we get to choose if we marry, we get to choose whom
to marry, and we don’t need to be married to have sex, to have
kids, or to leave home. So, when it happens, it’s much more
powerful and painful.

Marriage used to be until death, but life expectancy is now

longer than ever. Have we outgrown marriage?
No. We will always look for stable, committed relationships
to have families and raise children. We got stuck for a while
around the nuclear one-person-for-life model while life was
doubling in duration, but marriage is adapting and evolving to
meet the needs of today, such as blended families, single-parent
families, surrogate families, gay families, and donor families.

Infidelity is a deal breaker for some people, but why

doesn’t it necessarily mean divorce and walking away?
Many people are embarrassed to admit that they still love
the person who hurt them. They are ashamed to stay. You are
supposed to get out. It is the dignified thing. Sometimes, indeed
you must. Sometimes it’s just a shit show and everything has
been broken into a zillion pieces that cannot be put back
together.
But why can’t we imagine that people can repair in the
sense of re-pairing? Many find there is something worthwhile in
the resilience and robustness of staying and rebuilding the trust
and the connection. People need to be given permission to want
to stick together after an affair rather than to hide it.
Most people in the West are going to have two or three
marriages in their lifetime and some will do it with the same
person. When a couple marries at age 22 in college, it will be a
completely different marriage from when they’re 55 and their
three kids have left home. Couples either recreate a new
relationship with different power structures and interests as they
grow, or they find other people. Every organism and every
company knows that it needs to reinvent itself continuously or
else it fossilizes, but the notion of flexibility and fluidity and
adaptability in marriage is more unusual.

So reactions to infidelity are not a “one-size-fits-all”

approach either?
If you’ve been cheated on, most of your friends will say,
“Leave! Dump the dog (or the girl)! Get the hell out of there!” If
you don’t, your friends will judge youfor not judging your partner
enough. How can you stay without shame? How can you stay and
feel good about the fact that you took this challenge on?
Many people do stay and there needs to be a multiplicity of
stories to reflect that. One woman told me she stayed because
she loves her husband. Why? He has been an amazing father and
a great husband for 22 years. He helped her take care of her
alcoholic father and sick mother. He is a decent human being
who also had an affair. That’s just an example, and it doesn’t
describe all men. I might not be right about all of this but nothing
I say is made up.

Why do people have affairs? And why do happy people and

people in open relationships still transgress?
There are plenty of reasons why people have affairs — they
are unhappy, they fight, they are resentful, lonely, neglected,
rejected, sexually frustrated, sexually closeted, they have
personality issues, or they’re just dissatisfied with the
relationship. But people in happy marriages and people in open
systems cheat too. The typical view would be to say that
something is missing at home, since they wouldn’t be having an
affair if they had everything they wanted. It’s not that simple.
Marriage is not necessarily the culprit.
 The people who interest me the most are the ones who are
dedicated and devoted to their spouse. They value their family
and their life. They are in a system that they want to be in, and
they have an affair. Yesterday they were judging people having
affairs and today they are doing things they never thought they
would. Why do they trample on the very borders that they
themselves erected? Why are they willing to dispense today with
the relationship that they cared about so much yesterday? What
is this tsunami and the destructive force within it? They see it as
it’s happening. They stand to lose everything, for a glimmer of
what? Excitement and titillation doesn’t begin to capture it.
These are not frivolous people. They are often very responsible,
devoted citizens, parents, and mates. In the midst of an affair,
they are doing things like visiting their mother-in-law at the
hospital every day. They are a living contradiction.
My first book, Mating in Captivity, looks at the dilemmas of
love and desire inside couples. The State of Affairs considers
what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere. Affairs are
not nearly as much about sex as they are about desire —the
desire to feel seen, important, special, and to reconnect with lost
parts of ourselves. That is what makes us feel alive. The one
thing I have heard from people all over the world is that affairs
make them feel alive in the sense of renewal, energy, vibrancy,
vitality, autonomy, and mastery.
“Why now?” is a question I always ask of couples. People
will usually have had many opportunities, but why 16 years into
a marriage? Often it’s because something is pressing at the
mortality button. A parent dies, a friend goes too soon, or there’s
illness, infertility, or unemployment. Something that tells a
person that life is short. Something that pushes people to
question: Is this it? Is this my life for the next 25 years? When
people succumb to the gaze of a stranger, often it’s not because
they seek to leave their partner behind, but rather they want to
leave the person they have become. They are not looking for
another person, but for another self. Sometimes complacency,
laziness, disengagement, or estrangement positions people for
an openness to somebody else. Happily married people often
cheat because they don’t keep up their resistance.
And people in open relationships transgress because
breaking rules is part of human nature. There are always
rules — even in open relationships — and the freedom to be with
other lovers is not enough to quell the temptation to cross the
boundary, no matter how far it is. I am not trying to justify
transgression, but rather to understand it.

Your book is quite philosophical, particularly when you

talk about the tension between the desire for
freedom and to be in committed relationships, and the
conflict between domesticity and excitement. Where does
the therapy end and the philosophy begin for you?
Sometimes I philosophize with my patients. We muse on
the way life is. It’s not a problem-ridden narrative, but rather
infidelity highlights some of the existential dilemmas around love
and desire. People would love to think that you can affair-proof
a marriage. Yet, even the most protected life cannot shield itself
against those unknowns. That’s the philosophy; the part that
acknowledges what you cannot control, what belongs to
happenstance, what belongs to the unpredictable, and what
belongs to fate. There is a piece of life that is in a sphere that
you cannot reach no matter how much you root yourself and
batten down the hatches. Philosophical thinking is the willingness
to ponder these imponderables and ambiguities, these
uncertainties, to grapple with the tension, and to stay with the
question.

In the book, you say that we can learn from affairs to

reinvigorate marriages, such as fostering a sense of
aliveness, playfulness, and imagination.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean people can expect their marriage
to be as hot as an affair. Affairs remind us not to take our
relationships for granted, and to stay engaged. Don’t have your
most interesting conversations about life or passions or books
and politics with your friends and then only talk with your partner
about who is going to pick up the chicken. “Management Inc.” is
important, but don’t lose the curiosity.
Adventure and novelty are crucial to maintaining freshness.
I’m not talking about the novelty of positions in bed. I’m talking
about taking one another outside your comfort zones emotionally
and experientially. Go on a hike of a caliber that you’ve never
done before. You’ll often find out things you didn’t know about
them — or find that you were mistaken.
Don’t just get dressed when you go out with other people
and then come home and put on your pants that have completely
lost their original color. Make an effort to be attractive to your
partner. Don’t just imagine that they should want you just
because you’re there, unconditionally. They’re not your mommy.
And go the extra mile to make one another feel special. Rejoice
when something great happens to your partner. They will feel
seen, appreciated, and loved.
A couple going on their honeymoon asked me for advice
recently. I told them to have conversations that you’re not
supposed to have upon finding “The One.” Ask one another what
it’s like to be married. Ask if they miss their past. Ask if they
sometimes wish they were still single. Ask what they think will
happen one day when you look at one another and find that
you’re utterly not attracted. These are hypotheticals and there
are no answers, but it’s important to have the permission to have
these conversations throughout the relationship. People are so
reluctant to talk about these hypotheticals and most of the time
they’ll only talk about them after the crisis of an affair.

What’s next for you?

Men. I have a whole series of workshops now with men.
Trump and Brexit reflect a crisis of masculinity. No one knows
what it means to be a man today. We have the permission to ask
what it means to be a woman, but men have not been given
nearly the same permission to think about personal growth. I
want men to enter this conversation about relationships, about
their life, about their choices, and about what it’s like for them
not to be the primary providers anymore.
I’m also working on Season Two of my podcast Where
Should We Begin? to lower the walls of the therapy office, to
allow others to hear what goes on in the supposedly secret
stories of others’ problems, and to realize that while listening to
other couples they’re standing in front of their own mirror.
Couples are so often isolated that nobody knows what’s going
on, especially around an affair. An affair seals them in silence but
it’s actually so common and so much can be learned from having
a communal experience of it.
¤
Skye C. Cleary PhD is a philosopher and author of Existentialism
and Romantic Love.