Defining Cheating and Relationship Infidelity
You can’t do monogamy 90 percent of the time.
—Alanis Morissette
Welcome to the Doghouse
I have a giant bulldog named Dozer. His name is Dozer because he sleeps (dozes) a lot, and, like a bulldozer, he’s enormous, a bit uncoordinated, and relatively unaware of the havoc he can wreak as a big dog in a small house. Yet he’s reasonably smart—smart enough to know that certain behavior, like peeing or pooping on the floor, is a serious no-no. Nevertheless, we sometimes find a puddle (or worse) on the kitchen floor. Whenever that happens we point out what he has done, and then he is (temporarily) banished to his dusty outdoor doghouse. This is most definitely not his favorite place to be—separated from his human posse, his toys, and his treats, not to mention his squishy, overpriced doggy bed. But actions do have consequences, don’t they?
For Dozer, these temporary trips to the doghouse are a clear message that he has misbehaved and that he needs to act differently in the future. And he does understand, in his small-brain doggy way, that if he behaves for a little while out in the doghouse, we’ll let him back inside the people house. Then, if he doesn’t pee or poop on the floor, snarl at guests, knock down visiting toddlers, or eat the furniture, he’ll get to stay, hanging out and enjoying life in the place that makes him feel loved, included, and very, very happy.
If you’re reading these words, it’s likely because you are in the doghouse just as Dozer sometimes is. And quite honestly, if you’ve cheated on your mate, you’re there because you deserve it. Metaphorically speaking: you peed on the kitchen floor. Your infidelity dirtied and soiled your home, and your significant other is not very happy about it. So now you’re banished to the doghouse. But hey, at least she didn’t ship you back to the pound or give you to another family. At least not yet.
The difficulty for you and your trip to the doghouse is that you’re human, which means you have more responsibility for your mistakes than a pet does. Dozer is a dog, so we cut him a bit of slack and his punishments don’t last very long. But you’re a grown man, and what you did feels horrible to your mate. As a result, she is not likely to let you out of the doghouse until you demonstrate that you fully understand what you did and how you hurt her, and you reearn her trust to the point where she believes that you’re not going to do it again.
So get comfy out there in the doghouse, because looking at your loved one with sad puppy-dog eyes that say, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it, just isn’t going to cut it. That works for your pets, and maybe for your kids if they’re very young, but not for you.
What Is Infidelity?
Before we go any further, I want to be very clear about what I mean when I talk about infidelity (i.e., cheating). Without our having full agreement up front about this basic definition, you are likely to end up confused and misdirected.
I do not expect that my definition of infidelity will match up with your own. Yet I can assure you that my definition is very much in line with your significant other’s definition. So regardless of whether you agree with my version, you absolutely must understand and come to terms with the fact that this is how your spouse sees things.
Infidelity (cheating) is the breaking of trust that occurs when you keep intimate, meaningful secrets from your primary romantic partner.
Please notice that this definition of cheating does not speak specifically about affairs, pornography, strip clubs, hookup apps, or any other specific sexual or romantic act. Instead, it focuses on what matters most to your partner: the loss of relationship trust. For her, it’s not any specific sexual or romantic act that has caused the most pain. Instead, it’s the outright lying, the keeping of secrets, the lies of omission, the manipulation, and the fact that she feels that she can no longer trust a single thing you say or do (or anything that you’ve said and done in the past).
Now I’ll give you some good news. Once you accept and agree that the above definition does (for our purposes) define cheating, you are on the road to understanding your loved one’s anger, threats, hurt feelings, and need for control. In other words, you understand that you have broken her trust in you as a man and a partner. So into the doghouse you go.
Unfortunately for you, at this moment it doesn’t matter how wonderful you’ve been with the family finances, vacation planning, childcare, birthday remembrances, random gifts, or just plain being a charming dude. When you lie and keep secrets from your spouse about something really important (like extracurricular sex) and then she finds out, all the good stuff you’ve done immediately flies out the window. In her mind, everything else pales in comparison to your violation of relationship trust. So when she finds out that you’ve cheated, lied, and kept important secrets, she is going to be very pissed off and very hurt for a very long time.
“How long will she be angry?” you ask. Without doubt it will be longer than you would like. For now, let’s leave it at that; the topic will be addressed in more detail later.
“Why is she so pissed off?” you ask. Think of it this way: You are the one person she thought would never knowingly or deliberately hurt her or let her down. Yet you did exactly that, and in a big way.
Welcome to the doghouse.
If you can wrap your mind around the above definition of cheating, then you can also start to understand what your mate views as the most precious element of your relationship: trust. And that’s exactly what you have broken. So, to reiterate, it’s not any specific sexual or romantic act that has done the most damage to your betrayed partner and your relationship; rather, it’s your deception, emotional distancing, secrets, and the resulting loss of relationship trust. For your spouse, the emotional pain and loss associated with broken trust is significantly worse and longer lasting than any physical straying you have done. The result of your betrayal—you being in the doghouse—begins with broken trust. And it ends when trust is restored. Only then will you find your way out of the doghouse.
LIAR, LIAR
For many cheating men, the immediate and best solution to a loss of relationship trust is to continue lying, but this time more effectively. For men whose partners either cannot or will not allow themselves to see these men as untrustworthy, this tactic can work quite well—for a while, anyway. And the men who choose this path, as they get away with their increasing lies and secrets, tend to think, Great, problem solved.
If that’s your story and it’s working for you, have at it. It’s not my job to judge what you can and cannot live with. I will, however, tell you that your relationship problems are most definitely not solved by “getting away with it.” Even if your significant other chooses to believe your ever-increasing lies, typically because she doesn’t want to experience the pain of not believing them, she will still feel your emotional distance and unavailability, which is not good for your relationship. Furthermore, you will probably cheat again and get caught again, and your relationship will deteriorate even further.
So if you’re looking for a fast and easy way out, continuing to lie may be the way to go. If you opt for that route, please feel free to stop reading and to politely hand this book back to your significant other, or to throw it in the trash, or to give it to some other poor dude in the doghouse—preferably a guy who is motivated to make changes.
If, however, you desire long-term healing and maybe even a chance to make your relationship better than ever, I suggest you continue reading. But do so knowing that this book is about much more than getting out of a tight squeeze with some fast talking. It’s about the development of honesty, masculine integrity, genuine intimacy, and meaningful connection. It’s about developing an open and vulnerable (yes, vulnerability is a good thing) connection with your wife. And it’s about being able to look at yourself in the mirror and feel good about the man who’s looking back. To reap these rewards, you’ll have to man up, accept the consequences, and change your behavior in lasting ways. First and foremost, of course, you’ll need to stop lying.
Types of Cheating
Perhaps it hasn’t crossed your mind yet, but there are countless ways to cheat. Typically, though, infidelity falls into one or more of the following three categories:
1. Sexploration (purely sexual)
2. Booty calls (emotionally connected but casual)
3. Full-blown romance (deeply emotionally connected, long- term affairs)
These possibilities are explored and explained below. It is very likely that you will recognize your own behavior and thinking patterns somewhere in this discussion.
Sexploration (Purely Sexual)
Joey has been married for eight years. Nevertheless, he has profiles on several hookup apps, and he has casual sex several times a month with women he meets through these apps. He also engages in sexting almost daily with any number of women. However, Joey rarely exchanges personal information of any kind. In fact, he doesn’t even share his real name with his hookups. He tells himself that he loves his wife and that what he is doing isn’t hurtful to her because these other women mean nothing to him. He thinks of them as “an aid to masturbation,” similar to online pornography.
When asked what extramarital sex looks like, many guys think of sexploration: purely sexual activities lacking any sort of emotional component or connection, like Joey’s activities in the example above. Sex for sport, you might call it. These guys often think that because it doesn’t mean anything on an emotional level to them, it’s not cheating, and their spouses really shouldn’t care about it. They view chasing tail as roughly the equivalent of driving an off-road vehicle, climbing a mountain, working out, or winning big at fantasy football. It’s just something that guys do for fun and distraction.
I can assure you, however, that your significant other views the situation quite differently.
In general, men are genetically wired in ways that allow for a separation of sex and emotional connection (as we see with Joey in the example above). Women, however, tend to feel an innate, evolutionarily programmed need to connect their sexual behavior with their emotions. So while the desire to spread yourself around sexually without connecting emotionally may feel perfectly normal and even healthy to you, as a man, it’s a pretty safe bet that your spouse, as a woman, doesn’t understand or accept this idea, because she just doesn’t think that way. For her, sex and emotional bonding are deeply intertwined.
SEX IS . . .
Many men believe that complete vaginal penetration is required before an activity qualifies as sex and, in turn, as infidelity. They say things like, “If there is no vaginal penetration, it’s not sex, and if it’s not sex, it’s not cheating.” Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, I can guarantee you that your loving partner does not think this way. As far as she is concerned, hand jobs, oral sex (both giving and receiving), heavy petting, making out, and even just flirting can and do qualify as sexual activity and cheating. Ask yourself the following: If my significant other could watch my behavior with other women, are there parts that she would object to? If the answer to this question is yes, then what you are doing almost certainly qualifies as infidelity, even if you’d like to think it doesn’t.
If cheating is a purely sexual endeavor for you, you are not alone. The simple truth is that lots of men who cheat operate in this fashion. Whether you are perusing porn, hiring prostitutes, sexting with strangers, bopping the local barista, or using hookup apps for random sex, it is entirely possible that you feel no emotional connection to the women you’ve cheated with. To you, they are sexual adventures—no more, no less. And it is possible that you’ve defended yourself to your wife with a statement along the lines of, “I swear I wasn’t cheating, honey, because I never for a moment thought of leaving you.”
If you’ve tried this or a similar line, I’d be willing to bet that your spouse’s response wasn’t what you hoped for. This is because, as stated above, women typically view sexual attraction, sexual desire, sexual activity, and intimate connections differently than men do. Women are driven as much by emotional connection as by physical sexual arousal, and they have a difficult time separating and compartmentalizing the two. Most men are quite the opposite. So when it comes to sexual desire and sexual activity, men and women just plain view the world differently. Your nonemotional, purely sexual actions are difficult for your mate to fathom, and your protestations that “it meant nothing” don’t and won’t register with her.
Please note that I have no judgment whatsoever about your choice to engage in casual, nonemotionally intimate sex (pornography, affairs, hookups, and the like). In fact, there is nothing inherently wrong with your desire for casual sex. Except for one thing, which is that you’re in a committed and supposedly monogamous relationship, and being sexual with other women violates the trust your spouse has placed in you. You made a promise, through marriage vows or some other vow, either explicit or implied, that you would be monogamous with your significant other. You did not have to make this promise, but you did, and your mate took you at your word. Now that you’ve reneged, she is rightfully angry about that, and now you’re in the doghouse.
To sum up: Your desire for meaningless sex with other women is not the problem. The problem is that you lied, kept secrets, and broke an important commitment to your primary life partner. And because of that, she no longer trusts you.
Booty Calls (Emotionally Connected but Casual)
Robert has a high-powered job that requires a lot of travel to major cities around the world: New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and elsewhere. When he travels, he occasionally meets women that he finds attractive. When the attraction is mutual, he goes to bed with them, reasoning that what his wife doesn’t know can’t possibly hurt her. If the sex is good, he looks the woman up again whenever he’s in that city to see if she is available and wants to get together. Several of these women are now “regulars.” However, between trips he doesn’t think about these other women because he loves his wife and children very much.
You may, like Robert, be the type of guy who has a string of casual sex partners that you see repeatedly but only when convenient. You enjoy the company of these women, and you may even have occasional formalized dates with them, going to dinner or a movie before jumping into bed. But there is not a deep emotional connection. At most, these relationships are a series of recurring booty calls. There may be some friendship and there is definitely lots of hot sex, but there is very little in the way of meaningful emotional intimacy. Most likely, both of you are aware that the sex is not exclusive.
If this is the way you’ve been operating, you may have tried to defend yourself to your significant other with lines like, “It wasn’t a real affair. It was never anything more than sex. She means nothing to me.” And your mate most likely got even angrier because, as discussed above, she just doesn’t think or operate in that fashion.
Full-Blown Romance (Deeply Emotionally Connected, Long-Term Affairs)
Bret is a junior executive at a large accounting firm. Two years ago he was assigned to work on an important account with an attractive female colleague. They quickly found out that they worked well together. In fact, their pairing was so successful that they were jointly assigned several other accounts, which put them in close contact almost constantly during work hours. Their professional relationship became, in time, a friendship, and then a close friendship in which they confided intimate details about their lives—even occasionally complaining about the various problems in their (mostly good) marriages. Eventually, at one particularly intense work-related conference, their friendship turned sexual. Bret now feels stuck, because he cares deeply about both women. He doesn’t want to leave his wife and kids, but he doesn’t want to end the affair, either.
Some therapists specializing in infidelity and couples work suggest using the concept of “walls versus windows” as an analogy when helping unfaithful partners understand what their betrayed spouses are thinking and feeling. Author Shirley Glass explains this as follows:
You can have intimacy in your relationship only when you are honest and open about the significant things in your life. When you withhold information and keep secrets, you create walls that act as barriers to the free flow of thoughts and feelings that invigorate your relationship. But when you open up to each other, the window between you allows you to know each other in unfiltered, intimate ways.
The walls and windows analogy is particularly useful if your affair is emotional as well as sexual. With an emotional affair, such as Bret’s, cheating might actually be something you never intended to do. You were simply going about your business, being nice to the people around you, making friends as you went, and not worrying too much about whether those friendships were with men or women because you were already happily married. Unfortunately, platonic relationships—in the workplace, online, in the neighborhood, or anywhere else—can unexpectedly blossom into something more. Thus, the line between innocent friendship and cheating gets crossed.
Significantly, betrayed partners often sense the relationship threat well before the infidelity happens. For instance, Bret’s wife stated that she never felt comfortable about the fact that her husband was working so closely with an attractive female colleague. She also said, and Bret agreed, that Bret consistently devalued this opinion. Yet the wife was right. Becoming close to a female work colleague without setting clear boundaries was a bad call on Bret’s part. He just didn’t want to listen to his wife because he was having such a good time.
Generally speaking, emotional affairs feel much more potent than casual sex or recurring booty calls. For one thing, when you are emotionally connected to an affair partner (especially if she seems to be really into you), it becomes much more difficult to break things off, primarily because you care about her and don’t want to hurt her. And if the sex was amazing, it can be even more difficult to pull away. That is perfectly natural and human.
Making matters worse is that more damage is done to your primary relationship through an emotional affair than a purely sexual affair, because the more deeply you connect with the other woman, the more you move away from your mate, both emotionally and physically, no matter how much you may deny this. The walls and windows slowly but steadily shift away from your spouse and toward your affair partner. The longer you engage in the play, the banter, and the fun of the affair, the more powerful and ingrained this shift becomes. Over time you find yourself turning to the other woman to work through your fears, asking her to meet your needs and help you resolve your confusing moments. As you continually turn to her instead of your spouse for emotional intimacy, that connection feels increasingly meaningful, more so than your marriage at times.
MULTIPLE “MONOGAMOUS” RELATIONSHIPS
Emotional affairs can be taken to an extreme. In fact, I have had several clients who were actually living out more than one supposedly monogamous relationship simultaneously. Thus, they had full-fledged commitments to both women—maintaining two homes and two lives. Typically, these situations require a great deal of counseling (and legal wrangling) to resolve. In such cases, much more than this book is needed.
So there it is. Once you begin to confide in, rely on, and reach out to the other woman for emotional connection and understanding, especially if you are doing so in ways that you don’t with your spouse, you start the journey away from your primary relationship.
This is true even if your “friendship” hasn’t turned sexual, particularly if you find yourself lying or keeping secrets about it. So if you’re in an emotionally charged affair and you find yourself wondering when, exactly, you crossed the line, you might want to ask yourself the following:
All these questions boil down to the same thing: When did you make the other woman a priority over your spouse? Using Dr. Glass’s terminology, when did the walls and windows begin to shift? The moment that happened is the moment your affair started. Sex or no sex, the first lie, the first secret, or the first time you prioritized the other woman over your mate was the beginning of your affair and your (possibly unconscious) shift away from your marriage and family life.
But It Was Just a Webcam!
As our lives have moved increasingly into the virtual/digital arena, the once-clear line between sexual fidelity and cheating has, in many instances, become blurry. Consider, for example, the following gray areas:
In today’s increasingly digital world, the question that begs to be answered is this: Is live, in-person contact required for sexual infidelity, or does virtual sexual activity count equally?
A few years ago, in an attempt to answer this question, Doctors Jennifer Schneider, Charles Samenow, and I conducted a survey of women whose husbands were engaging in significant amounts of extramarital sexual activity, either online or in the real world. Probably the most important finding of our study was this: When it comes to the negative effects of one partner having sex outside a supposedly monogamous relationship, tech-based and in-the-flesh sexuality are no different. The lying, the emotional distancing, and the pain of learning about the betrayal all feel exactly the same to the betrayed partner.
The results of this study confirm in many ways what I’ve already stated throughout this chapter. It’s not any specific sexual act that does the most damage to the betrayed partner and the relationship; instead, it’s the constant lying, the emotional distancing, and the loss of relationship trust. In fact, for most cheated-on partners the emotional betrayal associated with sexual infidelity is nearly always more painful and longer lasting than the physical betrayal. Remember: Infidelity (cheating) is the breaking of trust that occurs when you keep intimate, meaningful secrets from your primary romantic partner.
One of the reasons I like this definition is that it encompasses both online and real-world sexual activity, as well as sexual and romantic activities that stop short of intercourse: everything from looking at porn to kissing another woman to something as simple as flirting. More important, the definition is flexible depending on the couple. In other words, it lets you and your significant other define your own personalized version of sexual fidelity based on honest discussions and mutual decision making. This means that it might be just fine for you to look at porn or to engage in some other form of extramarital sexual activity, as long as your mate knows about this behavior and is okay with it. However, if you are engaging in that behavior and keeping it secret, or if your spouse knows about it and doesn’t find it acceptable, then you’re cheating. So, once again, cheating is less about the behaviors you engage in and more about the lies you tell and the secrets you keep.
Can You Hear Her?
Typically, men who cheat are not fooling their partners as completely as they think. In other words, your wife may not have known exactly what you were up to, but she almost certainly knew that something was amiss. If so, you probably heard statements like the following:
It is possible that your spouse even engaged in a bit of detective work, looking for facts that would confirm her suspicions. If so, she may have done things like the following:
If your wife was, in your opinion, complaining or invading your privacy in these or other ways, it is likely that she was more in touch with your reality than you thought. She may have known that you were cheating while you were busily trying to convince yourself (and her) that you weren’t.
Note: At the end of each chapter I will pose several questions. Please consider these to be written homework assignments. They are designed to intensify your focus and make you think on a deeper level than if you were just reading along. I suggest buying a journal or a simple notebook in which you can write your answers. (You might also create a journal on your laptop.) I strongly urge you not to skip this work, because these are not idle questions. Remember, the more effort you put into the process of healing, the more likely you are to repair and even to improve your relationship.
QUESTIONS FOR
Reflection
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________