Transcript of Why Do People Cheat? Understanding the Psychology of Infidelity

Oh, this is so good. Psychoanalytic work is so good.

If that worked to just shame yourself into, Oh, this is bad. Don't do it.

We wouldn't have jobs, right?

Yeah. I've never had anyone come in and say, I am cheating because I want to hurt my partner, and I'm loving it. People are tortured by their own behavior.

That's the reality is no amount of understanding is going to take away the fact that that was shitty, and it's always going to be shitty.

From your experience, Amalia, why do people cheat?

Okay. Oh, man.

In this podcast, we unpack the internet's most asked anonymous mental health questions that you wish you could ask a therapist. And by anonymous, we mean the Reddit questions you post in the middle of the night.

If you're new here, welcome. I'm Felicia Keller-Boyle, licensed somatic therapist and clinical advisor at besttherapist. Com.

And I'm Christie Plantinga, founder of Best Therapist, and I've been in a lot of therapy. This show is brought to you by besttherapist. Com, a therapist's directory that bets therapists so you can focus on fit, not quality. You can find your best therapist at besttherapist. Com. It's time to find out what therapists are really thinking. Amalia Mirario is a licensed clinical social worker and ASEX-certified sex therapist, providing therapy in Detroit and online for clients in Michigan and Pennsylvania. She specializes in helping women and non-binary clients navigate the complex dynamics of love, intimacy, and self-acceptance. As a therapist who values authenticity and depth, Amalia creates a compassionate space for patients to explore both their conscious concerns and the deeper patterns that shape their lives. Amalia, welcome to the show.

Hi. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much for being here today, Amalia. I think this is absolutely a topic worth discussing, which is why Why do people cheat?

Yeah, like Christie said, this is a doosy of a topic. People have incredibly strong feelings about it. If you've ever been cheated on or suspected that your partner cheated on you, obviously, that's such a painful experience. If you've ever cheated, you're also still a human being despite what the internet may say. We are going to be handling it with grace and really to explore it and bring some nuance and some clear-eyed views to this topic when so much of the internet's advice is just really, really divisive. We're glad that you're here, Amalia, because we need a steady hand at the wheel of this topic, especially with so much heated conversation around it.

Yes, absolutely. I would not take on this conversation with just anyone. I know that you're both able to really bring a lot of compassion and care to something that's so sensitive to so many.

Absolutely.

I think before we get into the juicy topic of why do people cheat, Amalia, if you can explain just your clinical experience with this. I think that'd be really helpful for listeners to know. That would be great.

Sure. When I launched my private practice a little over five years ago, I pretty quickly got quite a few queries from people who had been someone who had cheated on their partner, whether it was a longer term affair, multiple times, a one-off, or maybe it didn't involve physical contact, but They had messaged people. That surprised me at first because it was nowhere on my website. It wasn't in psychology today or online profiles that I was specializing in that. But I think that when people saw that I had advanced training in human sexuality, I think people felt safer to come to me to talk about it. I think being a sex therapist has signaled a bit more openness than they might feel going to a different therapist. Not that other therapists wouldn't be open, but I think when you're reading online profiles and you're just wanting to signal safety, I think that is my guess as to why a decent amount of my practice became working with people who wanted to understand why they had done this and were feeling really confused and really ashamed.

That makes so much sense that they would look for a therapist with experience in sex therapy because they're looking for a place that they can go to where they're not immediately going to get judged. Even though therapists are supposed to try to remain impartial, we are also humans. We have our own beliefs and values, and it's totally possible that a client would go to a therapist and, lo and behold, find out that they are not really appropriate to help them with something they're already feeling so much deep shame and conflict about.

Totally. No one who has cheated needs to be told this was wrong. People know that this wasn't- It's like smoking.

It's like, Yeah, I know it's bad for me.

Yeah, totally. It's like, if that worked to just shame yourself into, Oh, this is bad. Don't do it.

We wouldn't have jobs, right? Yeah. Therapists wouldn't We have jobs if all people had to do was acknowledge this wasn't working for them.

Totally. We are able to see that when it comes to other types of behavioral changes. But for some reason with cheating, we think if we just say, Bad, don't do it. Just like, don't do it.

Yeah. Just say no to cheating.

Right. I'm excited to talk about some of the nuance to that.

I think it's important to acknowledge, too, for someone who has been cheated on, probably one of the most painful human experiences, I would think.

Absolutely.

Totally.

I think it's important to say, too, that if you are coming into this episode, maybe you've even been recently cheated on, and you're just like, What the hell happened? And you're looking for some understanding. We see you. We're empathetic to what's going on.

I actually hope that we can help. If you are someone who's recently had that experience, I hope that us talking about it can take you out of whatever kinds of fantasies you might have that it was your fault, that it was connected to your own worth.

Absolutely.

I want to ask the big question first, and then I'll have a bunch of breakdown type of questions and some really interesting things from Reddit as well, which we'll get into. Amalia, in your practice, why do people cheat?

So when I think about why people cheat, I want to think about, developmentally, what kinds of things happened early in their life. I want to be particularly paying attention to what happened when they were in a developmental stage thinking about triads. So when they were going from an early in life thinking about relationships from one to one, like caregiver to child, to thinking, Oh, my caregivers have a relationship outside of me. I'm not always in the room. You might have heard this referred as the etipole phase of development, but I don't know if that's too jargony to describe it like that. I also wanted to encourage us to think about it in a more neutral way in terms of gender. A lot of times when people hear etipole phase, they're thinking the little boy is in love with the mom and wants to kill the dad. I think what's important is don't worry about the gender stuff and who wants to marry who, but think about developmentally, we're not born with an understanding that two people could have a relationship outside of us. When we are very young, we are only seeing what's in front of us, and we are only imagining and experiencing relationships as one exclusive bubble that It's me and Christie or it's me and Felicia, it's not all three of us.

And the imagining that the two of you have a relationship that I'm not a part of, right? You have this whole world between the two of you that is private for me. And this is a It's a really hard thing for us to come to terms with when you're really little. And it can be a lot of really big feelings about this. Feelings of jealousy, wanting to control, anger, hurt, betrayal. This is one of the most important phases of development that I am listening for. When I'm working with someone who has had an affair or who has cheated. I'm really trying to hear in what ways are these triangles in their mind? In what way did this get laid down in their development? How is this unconsciously impacting how they're viewing relationships now and how they're behaving when there's a social expectation for them to be one-to-one, to be monogamous. If that is full of conflict and unresolved feelings, it might be an impossible structure. That's different from someone who is choosing consensually to be non-monogamous. I also want to make that distinction. This is not to pathologize people who have effectively communicated and have consensually signed up for a relationship that's not one-to-one.

I'm talking about people who have committed to being one-to-one and are not fulfilling that commitment.

I love that take on this. I have never heard it presented in that way, really going back to early childhood development and that developmental challenge we have to move through of beginning to hold things outside of what we can actually see. It makes me think of Piaget's developmental stages, that children, when they are really young, do not understand that objects continue to exist when they are not visible to that child, right? So in their minds, if it is not visible, it literally doesn't exist anymore. That's one of the reasons why peekabooos can be so thrilling, because For a moment, you have gone. You have completely disappeared, and then you reveal your face again. It's like, Oh, my gosh, you emerged out of nowhere.

Totally. And there are so many ways that we can get caught up in that as adults without even realizing it. Of like, yeah, I know it's wrong, but when you're in it, it's so hard to remember that there's someone else's feelings that are a part of what you're doing, even when you are one one with an affair partner. It just feels too abstract, too vague. It's like you know it's there, but you don't let yourself know that it's there when you're in the moment.

Yeah, it's almost like a form of dissociation in a way.

Yeah, like a not knowing, temporarily.

Exactly. A temporary not knowing. It's almost like you're splitting parts of your life, right? From when you're with your primary partner in that relationship, there are probably certain rules in certain ways of being. Then in order to go have the affair, you almost have to forget that this part of your life even exists.

Yes. You're making me think of something else, which is that One of the reasons, going back to the original question, why do people cheat? One part of this is also if someone has disavowed parts of themselves, that they allow to come out with an affair partner. That could be something sexual, but it could be something they aren't even really aware of that isn't sexual, but is like, Oh, this person has experienced trauma like I've experienced, or this other person just gets this other part of me, something that they have split off from the way they are with their primary partner. It might be because that part of themselves truly isn't welcome in the primary relationship or understood. Maybe Or it might be that they're imagining it wouldn't be understood in their primary partnership.

Or is it maybe they don't want that part to be known for a while?

I imagine, too. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. Yes. It's a part that is riddled with the conflict and shame, or they're afraid of knowing that part of themselves.

If they're already doing something quote, unquote, shameful by having an affair, why not also allow that to be the playground for the other parts that feel shameful. It's like, they've already opened that door. Maybe this is the place where I just get to be messy and I get to be all these different parts of myself that in my waking life, my other life, I'm not allowed to be because I'm not like that. I don't do bad things. I don't do wrong things. But I've carved out this other section of my life where all of those rules don't apply, and I can do and be all the things that I maybe consciously find not not okay.

Yes. Sometimes people are, outside of their awareness, actually pulling for punishment and wishing that the affair will be found out. Of course, they don't want it to be found out in their conscious mind, but they might do things that suggest otherwise, like leave some evidence out for a primary partner to find. It is so counterintuitive that they are working so hard to not be found out and at the same time are doing things to be found out.

There might be different reasons for doing that. Like you said, there could be a desire to get caught and to be punished. There could also be a desire for all of the hiding to stop so that they don't have to be torn between these two different parts and they can just resolve it. Something is going to happen, something is going to need to have to change, but they wouldn't have to keep on holding this big secret anymore.

Yes. That could be a repetition repetition of other times they've needed to hold big secrets, a repetition of wishing for a caregiver to help them with something they really needed help with. A poll for, I don't know how to make good choices, so can you find this out about me and start to be the one in control of my life? Can you start to be the person who's helping me in a way that feels like caregiving by monitoring me?

This feels like our most psychoanalytic episode so far. I know. This is deep in this stuff.

This is like a therapist playground.

Yeah, exactly. All of these interpretations. It makes sense to me that this is a topic where a psychoanalytic approach would be really appropriate. I would love to hear… Could you tell listeners a little bit about what a psychoanalytic therapy approach is? How would you describe this to somebody who is seeking therapy?

I would love to, because the more I learn about psychoanalysis, the more I cannot get enough, and I'm so pulled in. Psychoanalysis is a way of working that is typically pretty intense and really relies on this belief that we have our conscious mind and an unconscious mind. At the most basic, that's what you need to know, is that something like CBT is really useful for understanding your conscious thoughts and working with your conscious thoughts. But the unconscious mind is intricately interwoven with our early childhood development, our relationships, our attachment the relationship with the therapist. All of this has a lot of meaning in our unconscious mind, and things will repeat. So that, number one, unconscious is real, and number two, it repeats. We repeat and repeat and repeat until things are brought into our awareness. The process of bringing things into our awareness can be really slow. It can be really painful. It can be pretty labor-intensive because there are good reasons.

Fun.

I'm really selling it. Sign us up.

I'm all in because this is the type of work that I I do. But yeah, it's intense and sometimes slow and almost a bit mysterious compared to some of the other modalities that are just much more straightforward. Like a workbook. Exactly. We're really going in, and there's so much curiosity on the part of the therapist, obviously, but we're also asking that of the clients who are participating.

Yes, absolutely. There's a reason why it's so much easier to market CBT, because if you believe that you just need to come to this session and do this worksheet, and you're going to be able to make the changes you want, which some people can for some issues. I'm not discounting it, but that sounds so neat. It is a seductive pull of like, Oh, this is all I need to do, and I'll be able to live the life I want. There are reasons why your mind is protecting you from not knowing and why things are out of your awareness. But it's really important to remember, you don't do it alone. This is why you don't do it alone. You do it with a therapist. You do it with someone who you learn to trust and you work together. And the relationship is so, so important when you're working psychoanalytically, or psychodynamically is another word that you'll hear.

Okay. Well, it seems just so perfect for when you're doing something, like cheating, where you're like, Why the hell am I doing this? Exactly. Yes. But it's like when you have anxiety, it's like, I am anxious. I know I am doing these anxious behaviors. This is what... And I'm sure psychoanalysis is also helpful for anxiety.

Yes.

But for something like cheating, especially when it's just like, I don't even know why I'm doing this. I don't understand myself truly at that level.

Yes, exactly. Because I can tell you, I've I've never had anyone come in and say, I am cheating because I want to hurt my partner, and I'm loving it. That's never the experience. It's people are tortured by their own behavior.

Let's just take a moment with that because I think for people who are listening to this and have been cheated on and are in so much pain, maybe this is a small consolation, but I think that's really, important for you to hear because I think, like we already said, one of the conclusions folks can come to is there's something wrong with me. I must not be this enough or I'm too much of that, or they are trying to hurt me. Just to hear that for better or worse, you have never heard that be the case for somebody who is coming in for cheating. No one has said that to you to date, and in fact, people feel incredibly riddled with guilt and shame when they become conscious of the impact they're having on their partner.

Yeah, and the sample, I think is a little skewed, right? Like, these are people who are seeking help for it. But even in the case, like let's say this is the worst case scenario sociopath, psychopath, they just want to hurt people. They probably don't even understand why they want to hurt people at the end of the day. So it's almost like, and again, I think sociopath, psychopath, other words that get thrown around a lot online without really understanding.

And that's a completely different situation. If someone is truly lacking empathy, then that's a whole different category, right? Yeah. So that is so extreme and not very common. But Yeah. Even if someone were truly trying to hurt you because they got pleasure out of that, that person is going to be in the extreme minority of folks who are cheating.

Especially as the sole motivator, because I will add that there There can be a way that cheating is a way of showing anger and aggression that is not conscious, that someone's not aware of. It can be used sadistically. I do want to get back at this person. I do want to hurt this person because they are feeling that this person has hurt them. I don't want to discount that as part of the picture. But to Christie's point, of course, the people who are coming in for therapy are motivated to want to understand themselves and are sometimes feeling absolutely tortured by their own behavior and stuck.

What are some ways that that plays out in an adult life? I think we've mentioned a few, but maybe just some common things that you've seen.

It might go hand in hand with someone really being in denial that what they do with one person could impact their relationship with another person, that they're really only able to see and feel what's right in front of them at one time. If there is a sense of wanting to get back at someone for something, it could be that they are feeling really jealous of how their partner is interacting with someone. It could even be someone's really jealous of how their partner is interacting with their own kids. It can sometimes go hand in hand with people families of origin had loose definitions around their roles. A term that is all over the internet is parentified child. If someone was very parentified and their role as child was not really protected in their family, there can be a sense of not understanding the need to protect roles of relationships. But if you feel attraction for someone, it doesn't mean you have to act on it. You can stay in your role and stick to your commitment. There's a lot around boundaries, a lot around being able to keep in mind more than one person at a time, and a lot about the role in relationships and understanding your feelings without losing sight of the role that you've agreed to be in.

That makes sense to me, and I do think the boundaries thing does come up. Maybe it's like an office romance. It's like knowing when to not be alone with someone or knowing that, Hey, probably getting their number isn't a good thing. But when you have less of those boundaries just because you learned them growing up, it's going to be easier, of course, to cross them because they don't really come to your mind as much. Is that a fair assessment?

In a way, being able to separate fantasy from reality.

That there's a A lot of fantasy about how things will be different with someone else, how you'll be different with someone else.

It doesn't work out that way, but it can seem so appealing.

Okay. Well, I think this will be a, hopefully, particularly healing question that I would love your opinion on. This is for people who have been cheated on and also people who have cheated. That is, can you truly love someone and still cheat on them?

Another disclaimer. I think it really depends on your personal belief system around love. I think love is a word that means something different to everyone. And there will be people who absolutely have drawn the line that you cannot love someone. It means you don't love them if you cheat on them. And if that's your personal belief, that I'm not here to try to convince you to stop believing what believe. But for me, I think, yes, I think you can love someone and cheat on them. You probably are noticing with the way we answered that whole first question, none of it was about the partner. None of it was about, here's what this other person has done or what they're lacking that has made someone cheat. It's all intra-psychically focused on the person who's doing the cheating. It really doesn't say anything about what's happening in the dynamic between them or what their feelings are for their partner. That's probably its own conversation. But we're really thinking about what's happening in the mind of the person who's doing the cheating.

Because I imagine there are many instances still where the relationship is not going well. And so then, they seek out satisfaction, whether it's sexual, emotional, whatever. I think that's where most people's minds go when they think of cheating, either like, I'm not good enough, or our relationship isn't satisfying in whatever way that that is.

Yeah. And that might be true, that the relationship isn't satisfying, but that still doesn't It touched the question of love for me.

Yeah, I'm really with you here. Everyone has a different definition of love, which is so crazy to me. Yeah.

I don't know. Just not being a therapist of like, I don't talk about what love is. I'm like, Love is love. You should know.

That is so annoying. I remember being a kid and dating my first boyfriend when I was in high school, and he said he loved me. I was always like, What does that mean? What does it mean to be in love? I remember asking my other 16-year-old friends what love was, and I've never really found a satisfying answer, and certainly not one that's universally accepted. I think it really does depend on your definition. When cheating happens, you are probably in a situation of having to maybe redefine what love means to you, whether you're the person who is doing the cheating or the person who has been cheated on. Both parties may have told themselves that if I cheat, that means I don't love someone. Then maybe it happens and you're thinking, Well, I want to continue this relationship. Okay, well, it sounds like you have to update your definition of love, right? What does it mean? Is it possible to cross that line and come back from it and decide that you do, in fact, love each other? Because I can imagine a world in which lots of people actually have been through this, right? And decide to stay together.

And it does require an update in the definition. That's just such a personal journey and personal choice. And again, I think with everything related to this, people really want a concrete yes or no. This is, annoyingly, another one of those places where we're going to do the therapist thing and say it depends, right?

Yes, totally. If I'm working with someone who has been cheated on and they're grappling with that question, we're going to grapple with it for them. What does it mean to them? How does that connect with their own development and their own beliefs? We want someone to really understand their whole self as much as possible, not for me to say yes or no.

Exactly. Yeah. A therapist or your 16-year-old friend.

Both great resources.

Both great resources. On this topic. But they can give you the answer that's right for you. That's something that you really have to discover and define for yourself, and it's likely something that's going to get updated throughout your lifetime and should. My definition of love as a 16-year-old is not the same definition I have today, and thank God, right?

Yes. I think one way of defending yourself against all of the hard feelings that come with those questions is to actually focus on your partner's inner world completely. If you are someone who has been cheated on and you find yourself in your own therapy sessions really wanting to focus on why your partner cheated and understand their traumas and their inner world, there is maybe something happening there that you're trying to protect yourself from all of the difficult feelings that come with facing the reality. Maybe there's a fantasy that if you understand totally why this person did it and what's happening in their inner world, then it won't hurt as much. There might be some truth to that, but I would also encourage you to think about what could be repeating in your own life. When you're facing these big decisions of, do you stay? Do you go? What is love to you? Those are questions that you really want to work on thinking, Okay, where else in your life have you faced these types of questions? When else have you felt betrayed? When else have you felt totally blindsided by something? What are you feeling about that?

I think you'll find a lot of wisdom in coming from that place, even though it's so tempting to think you just have to get to the bottom of why your partner did it, and then it won't hurt. It's still going to hurt.

Yeah. That is, I think, one of the hardest things to face about this, that some things that happen in life hurt, and they will always hurt to some extent. That was actually one of the best pieces of insight, wisdom I ever got from a therapist. It was the first time I worked with a therapist. I was talking about something that was really, really old for me and really painful. I would say, Man, I just want to get over this. I'm so tired of being upset about this. The therapist said, Well, Felicia, what happened? It was really sad. Instead of wishing or hoping or pressuring yourself that you would get over it, what if it was just okay that it was sad? I was like, Oh, my gosh. I had literally never considered it. I thought, because this was over a decade ago, it shouldn't hurt anymore. I think that's the reality is no amount of understanding is going to take away the fact that that was shitty, and it's always going to be shitty, and that's okay.

Yes. That's so beautifully said, and that your therapist is there to be with you in that. It's not just about, let's intellectualize and move past it. Let's try to use your sessions to psychoanalyze your partner. It's more about, let's just be in that together, and we'll understand what this means for you.

Beautiful.

I know. We always have the moment we're like, oh. Our hearts. Every episode. Just feeling so calm down and just so touching.

So what does Reddit have for us, Christie? Now, Now that... Yeah.

It was interesting doing some digging on all this because the question, why do people cheat? Of all the research I've done for our season so far, this question was asked a hundred times more. Wow. Than like anything else. So this is from the subreddit Ask Men Advice. It was only posted 15 days ago, so it's nice and fresh. Why do people cheat instead of just ending the relationship. Something I've never really understood, why do people, men or women, cheat? What's usually the main driving factor that triggers someone to cheat in the first place? If you're unhappy in a relationship, whether it's physical, emotional, or whatever, why not just end it instead of going behind your partner's back? To me, it seems like cheating causes way more damage in the long run, not just for the person being cheated on, but also for trust in future relationships. Would like to hear from people who have either cheated or been cheated on. What do you think the root cause really is?

I would be curious to hear if there's anyone in the comments who has done the cheating and had an answer. It reminds me of the example you used earlier of why do people smoke when you know it's bad.

It's like, yeah, do I- Because we also like it.

Yeah, there's something gratifying. So yes, do I think it's a better idea to Say, I'm unhappy. I need to part. I don't want to hurt you. And go your separate way and then start a new relationship. Of course. I don't think that's really up for debate. But that people, there's something gratifying. There's something that's being repeated, some conflict that is deep within them that they are trying to work out. I asked what anyone in the comments had to say because I would be surprised if anyone really knew. If anyone responded with something that was really well thought out or if they're like, I don't know, it just seemed hard or impossible.

Yeah, to be honest, most of it sounds like it's people who have been and cheated on saying stuff like, comes down to people wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. He wanted the status and normalcy of the lovely wife and children while living the single life. She wanted the nice house in the suburbs while paying less than a third of the rent and none of the utilities, but wanted to party like she was still single. I think maybe that's the perspective more of people who have been cheated on, or maybe know someone who have been cheated on, and that was their reflection. Because I think because of all the shame, probably even on Reddit, people don't really want to be like, Hey, I cheated. And everyone's going to be like, Fuck you.

Exactly.

I was going to say, Hey, Reddit would be the place if there were to be a place.

Yeah, they would probably get their asses handed to them, even though I think it's a fair question where it's like, why wouldn't you just end it? But we've already gotten into all the reasons that people don't.

Yeah, and there might be some truth to some of those conjectures that people have made. If one of these people were to get into therapy and say, Hey, I'm cheating, and do the psychoanalytic work of uncovering what is underneath that, some of it might be a bit of like, I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I want these certain privileges or access to things that I have, and I want the freedom, which seemed to be the theme with both of those examples that you brought up, Christie, is security and freedom, access and freedom, that dichotomy that people were highlighting. My guess is that is sometimes the case. Amalia, would you say you've heard some people come to that conclusion?

Yes. I think I've used throughout the episode the language of inner conflict. I think what you just explained is a perfect example of what I mean when I say inner conflict, of wanting closeness, wanting intimacy, wanting connection, while also having some fear that intimacy will mean their freedom is gone and doing something to try to hold on to their freedom. Whether it's true or not, that the intimacy would in a tangible way, impede upon their freedom. Because, of course, remember, they have chosen, presumably, to be in this relationship.

Of their free will.

Of their free will. But it feels, in an unconscious way, it feels like They will be trapped or violated or smothered, but they still want the intimacy. That's a perfect example of what I mean when I say inner conflict, and it shows in this behavior.

Absolutely. Those really deep core needs that all humans have for a sense of closeness, belonging, intimacy, and also for freedom, individuality, autonomy, and this ability to express oneself. Those are often at the polar ends of the same spectrum, right? We need both. If we don't know how to really feel as if we're getting both in the context of our primary relationship, If we feel like that is the place where we can only get one of those needs fulfilled, like this is where we get all of our intimacy and closeness and belonging, but I have no idea. I haven't really negotiated or figured out how to get a sense of freedom within the context of this relationship. It may, at some feel easier to go cheat. What's happening when you do that is now you possibly have this really intense inner conflict, but that's somehow still less work for you than figuring out how to get both needs met in the context of this relationship. Again, that's where the psychoanalytic work can come in of really understanding what is maybe the work and the effort that you're avoiding over here because even though this is so torturous, it's somehow feels like less work for you.

So is that really true? Can we investigate that together?

Yes. And the negotiation of the freedom is within the relationship, but it's also sometimes it doesn't matter It doesn't matter what's happening in actuality in the relationship. It doesn't matter who the partner is. It feels like there's no freedom on the inside. Totally. Because there was some earlier experience in the way that you initially were relating to caregivers of feeling totally impinged upon. And so you play that out with your partner, even if your partner isn't the one doing it.

Yeah. They might be like, I'm seriously not trying to stop you from doing A, B, C, D. But the pattern that a person comes into that relationship is one in which, or at least early on, anytime there was intimacy, there was also control, perhaps. Yeah. And so the partner doesn't even need to attempt to control them for the person to feel as if they're being controlled. And at the end of the day, you could go from relationship to relationship to relationship, cheating, burning bridges, always feeling as if this other person is trying to control you, and maybe that's not even what's going on. And you'll be wondering why this is happening, and maybe even come up with ways that this person is trying to control you without bothering to check if that's true or not or trying to create something different. You could stay stuck in this repetition cycle like you were speaking to earlier.

Totally. What we hope for is that that then repeats with the therapist, right? Why are Why are you charging me this cancelation fee?

Why are you telling me I can only come at this time?

Or whatever the thing is, why are you trying to control me? We want that thing to happen with the therapist so that it can be talked about and processed and that cycle is broken.

Exactly. Oh, this is so good. Psychoanalytic work is so good.

I did find an interesting comment, and I want to say. Oh, yes. These are not the opinions or beliefs of necessarily, I don't know this podcast, but it's giving a little more nuance, I think. Actually, no, Amalia, now that I'm reading all these comments on this, I'm like, maybe I am afraid to this episode because people are in it. There are a few different reasons that overlap. A lot of it is status. Being in a committed relationship in most cultures is socially superior to being single. This is especially true in conservative circles, but it's true across the board. There's also a mix of two reasons: a genuine desire not to hurt someone else and cowardice. Almost all of us are afraid to end a relationship that we know isn't working for us. Part of it is that we generally care about the other person we We wish the relationship was better. We don't want to hurt the other person. Yes, cheaters inevitably hurt their partners more down the line, but no one ever said humans were rational. Our brains are geared for short term social analysis, not long term. The cowardice largely comes from the fact that we can't prove that our reasons for ending the relationship are good enough.

There are going to be people that we care about who hate us and think we're a bad person for ending a good relationship, even if the relationship wasn't good for us. This is especially true for married couples where divorce is almost universally understood as a negative thing. Lastly, it's that sexual attraction is known to reduce cognitive capacity. You are genuinely dumber and more impulsive around someone when you are sexually aroused. This causes a feedback loop. Being around the affair partner feels really fucking good, just like being around anyone you're attracted to feels really fucking good. Then you aren't around them and you feel like shit. You're guilty as hell. You know you're doing something awful and wrong, you tell yourself you're going to break it off, confess your partner, or maybe even end your current relationship. But wanting to do those things and having the courage and self-esteem to actually do it are two separate things. Cheaters universally have extremely low self-esteem. Even the narcissistic ones who are being deliberately abusive with their cheating. And of course, that is sometimes the reason, too. Sometimes this teacher is just a Narcist who doesn't give a fuck who they hurt as long as they are getting their validation.

Damn.

I appreciate their honesty and that they took the time to really think and to type that out.

They hashed it out. Yeah. They did. That felt really nuanced. Super insightful.

And I hear how much that person feels powerless. They are feeling like everyone else's rules and expectations matter more than what they want for their own life, and they're not really able to hear themselves.

It's tough to know if this person actually cheated.

They don't say. Is this person a therapist, actually?

I would encourage that person, if they have cheated, to get some help making sense of where they can have more agency in their life. It sounds like they feel really, really burdened by what other people expect of them, and the compromise they've made is possibly to cheat. But that's not the only way.

Yeah.

I think what's so important about this is that if this is a part of a really, really early pattern, then it is likely to be repeated, not because it's cheating, but just because it's an early pattern. If it is not resolved, if there isn't a new path forward, it's likely to get expressed again and again and again, maybe not just as cheating, but in a multitude of ways. This could show up in someone's career, this could show up in their friendships, this could show up in all different areas of their life. If they've got an around intimacy, freedom, control. This is going to be a theme across relationships, and it's going to obviously manifest differently depending on the area of life, but it is probably going to continue to cause them problems. Again, if they don't take the time to really understand the underpinnings of it, it's just going to get repeated again and again.

Absolutely. I love that you brought up it. It could be cheating again or it could be something else. This person who left that comment immediately not knowing this person is not doing anything about them. I'm like, Wow, they sound like they really feel disconnected from their sense of agency that other people's expectations just totally dictating their life. Yeah, you can imagine all the ways that could create problems at work, not just in terms of possibly cheating.

We don't even have time to get into. I was getting some also like, a man does this. Socially acceptable that. I was getting some of that, too. We literally don't even have time to get.

But it matters. Yeah.

Social context absolutely matters. We can talk about it sociologically. We can also talk about the collective unconscious in the way that these things infiltrate our minds.

Yeah. That'll be part two. Part two to this topic if we don't get so much hate DMs that we want to cover this topic again.

I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. I hope that folks listening are feeling like their feelings are valid regardless of whichever side they've been on. And there could very well be people who have been on both sides. We're talking about this as if it's two distinct groups of people. But that's, of course, not always the case. There are probably many people who have both been cheated on and who have cheated.

That's a great point. People who have banks and who have been cheated I know. Okay, last post from Reddit. Not necessarily a question. This is from the subreddit, Change My View. Change My View. People who cheat, regardless of the circumstance, are selfish. I feel important to first preface that I've never personally been cheated on myself. I just don't understand why people don't have the courtesy to simply tell someone it's not working out or end things before they move on to other relationships. It makes sense to me that be appropriate. Is it because we cannot have difficult conversations? Why can't we just be honest? I'm truly open to seeing a less black and white view on this. I've never personally been cheated on myself. I've just always personally believed that's unforgivable. How Can you ever trust them again? Respectfully excluding relationships that have any form of abuse going on. So change my view. People who cheat, regardless of the circumstance, are selfish.

Okay, I'm not trying to be an apologist for people who cheat, but we're all selfish. Fundamentally, people are making decisions with the goal of increasing their happiness and decreasing their discomfort. That's how we're moving through the world. Now, it's not that we can't make decisions that don't prioritize that, but under most circumstances, that's part of how we operate through the world. I think the answer is probably yes, there is obviously a degree of selfishness in this. But to me, that just feels fundamental and more like a matter of degree. Amalia, what you were saying earlier is there might be ways that someone who is cheating is actually in their own mind, in a roundabout way, trying to prioritize their main partner's feelings, and probably also the feelings of the person they're cheating with, right? It's like, well, if I tell the person, that's going to hurt them. Either way. Kind of like the commenter on the previous post said, if I tell them I don't want to be with them, it's going to hurt them. If I cheat on them, it's going to hurt them. I'm like, this is a lose-lose situation. So they might be, and again, I'm not trying to defend people cheating, just trying to illuminate it.

But it may be that in that moment somehow, this was the best outcome they could come up with. I'm going to both try to hurt them the least amount possible while also hurting myself the least amount possible. And this was the best I could come up with for right now, even if it's still overall not great.

Yeah, I think I agree with what you're saying. And the language that I would put to it is you're describing the pleasure principle, and you're describing the ways that when we're internally conflicted, we're always compromising. This is true in daily things, right? Absolutely. This isn't some big pathologized thing. I wanted to go watch Netflix after I finished my day-to-day, but I signed up to be on this podcast.

To talk about super difficult stuff.

I also wanted to be here, right? I wanted both. I wanted... I had to make a compromise. Okay, I'm going to go watch Netflix after we're finished recording. We're always doing this all day, all the time. It's not- About literally everything. Everything, big and small. When it comes to something like cheating, it's just that happening on a really large scale. Exactly. I think we have such a hard time thinking about it, though, because of how significant the morality is around this. Morality, I just hear this whole conversation online happening through the lens of what's right and wrong. Morality is just not going to take us where we need to go. It's just not enough to help us.

That's a great point. Yeah, you're right. All of these conversations are basically some version of, is this right or is it wrong? If it's wrong, then we can just treat this as something that's totally wrong and this person is 100% bad, and we can wrap this conversation up and move on with our lives, right? Or is it good? And of course, it's not good because it's so clearly bad. We're like, it's not great, obviously. We can't really boil it down to just that. It's like we're asking the wrong questions. If we're stuck on the morality issue, we're totally missing the point of this whole thing, and we're not going to get anywhere. If the goal is just, is this right or wrong? Is this person bad or good? We never actually resolved the issue. So is the goal to make a moral decision about this, or is it to actually resolve it?

Them. We have really gone places in this episode. I didn't think I'd be discussing what is love on this podcast today.

What is the nature of good and evil? Yeah, what the hell?

What happens after we die? Let's get that in here. We have a couple of minutes. Oh, boy. That's so true. Are we trying to say what's good or bad? Or are we trying to come to an understanding about this topic?

Yeah. I can very confidently defend my position that I am here to try to help people, and deciding if they are good or bad is not helpful at all.

We know smoking is bad.

100%.

We know smoking is bad. That's not how to get someone to quit.

Instead of, How can I stop smoking? It's asking, Are people who smoke bad?

Exactly.

It's like said, Amalia, we'll get nowhere with that question because what we're doing when we're asking that question is if you're the person who's been cheated on, it's one of the things to keep you busy besides feeling your own hurt and understanding what this activates for you in your own psychology. For the person who's doing the cheating, it's also a distraction from, Well, what's going on and what can I do to change these behaviors or come to a place of resolution in this? It's distraction. It's very handy because the other things that we're describing are so much more painful and require so much more work.

Yes. There may be pieces of what we've said today that really give you something new to think about and land with your personal experience. There might not be because you might have some other type of inner conflict and inner issue that we didn't touch on today.

Absolutely.

Because everyone is so unique, and that's One of the things that makes this work, never boring. Always. It's so fascinating, and we'll just never get old.

I hope this is bringing people some comfort. There's nothing wrong with going on Reddit and asking to be seen in some of your darkest moments. If what you're actually wanting is to get a real resolve in yourself to to feel better about yourself, to find a path forward, if you've been cheating to change your behavior, really the answer is to do work on yourself. There's no way around that.

There's no shortcut?

There's no shortcut. Once again, we discover on this podcast that there isn't a shortcut. Well, then I'm out. No, totally. Go find a therapist regardless of which side of this equation you may be on. I hope we've made a case for the power of depth work, which is another thing you might hear psychoanalytic therapists use. This is traveling from the tip of the iceberg, the conscious mind, into the much, much, much, much larger and deeper base of the iceberg, the underwater portion of the iceberg. There's so much to discover in there. But don't go alone. Take someone with you. Don't go alone.

Don't go alone. Don't underestimate it.

It's really, really powerful. It's, I think, some of the most profound types of work that we can do in therapy.

There's so much freedom on the other side. That's the word for me. If you are feeling tortured by your own mind and your own choices, there is freedom on the other side.

Beautiful. One of my teachers says, The bigger the fear, the bigger the freedom on the other side. And that's exactly what you're saying. The bigger the fear, the bigger the trepidation, the more stuck you feel, the more freedom is on the other side of working through that. So you have so much to gain. If you feel like you're a person who's been stuck in patterns, whether that's being cheated on or cheating, there is actually a way out of that. You aren't stuck in this pattern for the rest of your life. You're not damned to unfulfilling relationships. But the only way out of that, in most cases, is to get in there and get your hands dirty and doing that with somebody who you can trust. One of the best ways to do that, in my opinion, is to go on a few first dates with different therapists to see what it feels like to connect with them. I also want to say, Amalia, because you mentioned something earlier that I think was so important, that it is normal for conflict to come up in your relationship with your therapist. In fact, when you're working from a psychoanalytic perspective, that is one of the big ways that change can happen, one of the big ways that we can resolve these patterns and complete them in a new way.

Now, I'm not saying go into your therapy session trying to fight with your therapist. I'm not saying therapists are out to frustrate you intentionally, but just that in Of course, in the course of any human relationship, frustrations and challenges will occur. But therapists are in this unique position that no one else in your life is truly, where they have a vested interest and a responsibility to support you and to support your development in a really, really unique way. So take advantage of it. Don't run away when there's conflict. Now, of course, if this is truly not a good fit, you are empowered to make a change. If it's at all possible, lean into it. Get honest with your therapist. Have the tough conversations there. A great therapist will be able to hold their own boundaries and hold themselves while also staying connected with you.

Yes, absolutely.

Amalia, we have to ask you before you go, what do you really think about people who cheat?

Oh, man. I think that people who cheat need help deserve help if they want help.

Beautiful. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Anything that somebody might be doing that is harmful to them and others, help is out there. If you want to change, if you feel like this is actually a problem in your life, which, of course, is a very important first step, you have to decide that this is something you want help with. But if you do, there is help out there. That doesn't include debating your your value, your intrinsic value as a human. Amalia is at least one therapist out in the world that's a safe place to go to with these issues.

Thank you so much. Yeah, of course.

Thank you for joining us on this. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you led us through the topic, and we're just so grateful.

Where can people find you if they want to learn more about your work, work with you, connect with you, follow you on social media?

Sure. So the best place to find me is my website. It's amitydetroitcounseling. Com. You can find me on Instagram at Amalia Mirazrillo. You can subscribe to my blog. I really enjoy writing blogs because it gives me much more real estate to dive into these topics than I find that.

Room for nuance.

More room for nuance than I'm going to find in an Instagram caption. We used a lot of of lingo today describing different kinds of therapists. You might be listening to this like driving, doing the dishes. You might not have taken extensive notes.

Psycho what?

What did he say? Exactly. I know it can be overwhelming not knowing what types of terms to even search for.

Absolutely. We want to make sure that you're able to find a therapist who is a great fit for you. Amalia has really graciously offered to share some of her guides with you. She's We've got a guide for folks who have been cheating and are ready to get some help so that you can help find a safe and supportive therapist for you, and a guide for people who have been cheated on so that you can find the right therapist for you. We've got those in our show notes so please go grab those. Get her a freebie and get on her email list.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much, Amalia. It was such a pleasure. Thank you both. It was such a pleasure. I really hope that people enjoy this conversation, learn a lot from it.

That's all for this week's episode.

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