Affairs always cause pain, but what I’m looking for is where exactly did the knife twist?
No story of
betrayal is simple; it focuses on the story of Saskia and Amin. They are a couple, married for 11 years with 3
young children. I met them one year after Saskia discovered Amin’s year-long
affair with a co-worker.
When I sit with a couple, there are
always two types of stories present in the room; the spoken and the unspoken.
The first manifests in dialogue and what we can hear, see and feel. The second
is what is unspoken — private personal dialogues, hidden assumptions and covert
motivations.
For every deceived partner, there is
a particular pain point that is unique to them. In the session, Saskia seemed numb and frozen
– tears streamed down her face without her even knowing it. My challenge was to understand what was beyond
the fortress of her silent pain. At
first glance, one would say, “of course she’s been hurt, he cheated”. In one sense that’s true - an affair is a
fundamental violation of trust. But the
story doesn’t end there.
Saskia had a traumatic history in a
politically turbulent country. Where she came from, women were attacked, raped,
abused, and labeled “meat” by men because they could be used and discarded so
easily.
She chose her husband Amin because he
didn’t fit the profile of what she knew men to be. He was a good guy, with good
values. She believed that she of all women had found a man who wouldn’t hurt
her and could redeem her of her dim view of men. Amin, unknowingly, had been
scripted into the role of the “golden apple”. But then Amin had an affair.
You will hear people say, “it’s not
that you cheated, it’s that you lied”. For her, this complaint was expressed in
sharp relief. By putting another woman ahead of her, Amin made her feel
invisible. For Saskia, who viewed Amin as the one potential mate who would not
violate this unwritten code, this was devastating.
Likewise, Amin’s reasons for cheating
were no less complicated than his wife’s feelings about betrayal. He talks
openly of feeling lonely and abandoned by his wife. He says that a lack of
communication and the years-long misunderstandings between them has pushed them
apart, so he sought comfort elsewhere.
But he too has a piece of the iceberg
that is not visible to me. Alongside his feelings of discontent, Amin had
learned in his childhood to keep a part of himself secret. Amin, because of his
upbringing, had mastered the art of the double life; compliant at home, and
rebellious on the outside. This layer was helpful for me to place his actions
in context — another piece of the story.
Having conversations they’ve never
had before
Amin’s affair took place at the end
of a long period of distancing for the couple, which accelerated after the
births of their children. By the time Amin turned to another, the couple’s sex
life was, in both of their recollections, “terrible”. More importantly, their
communication had deteriorated. Their story was one of loneliness and their
communication had become a race to the bottom.
Saskia and Amin had both been
sexually unfulfilled for years. But post-affair, they were refreshingly honest
about their sex life for the first time.
For many couples a betrayal is the
first time they talk about core issues in a relationship, during what I call
the meaning-making phase. After the crisis phase has died down, they begin to
try to figure out what went wrong.
Once trust is broken, can it be
healed?
For many couples, infidelity isn’t
the ultimate deal breaker. And whether or not infidelity ends the relationship,
it acts as powerful alarm system that often jolts a couple out of complacency
and makes them realize what they stand to lose, or what they have already lost.
For
Saskia and Amin, this session did not have a happy ending with the bow on top
to match. However, they did begin to talk about topics and feelings that had
laid dormant up to and in the wake of the affair. The road is not always a
straight line.
This article was written by Esther Perel, author of The
State of Affairs and Mating in Captivity.
Esther Perel (born 1958) is a Belgian psychotherapist notable
for exploring the tension between the need for security (love, belonging and
closeness) and the need for freedom (erotic desire, adventure and distance) in
human relationships.
