Esther Perel with Chris Cuomo: The State of Affairs — Rethinking Infidelity

look this is so much more interesting than what I usually have to talk to people but then again it's kind of what I have been talking to people about out more and more in the news I made notes I went through the book very carefully there really is so much in this book that will defy expectation if I might brag on it for a moment don't worry I'm gonna cut you down for about 35 minutes but first I'll start positive there really is something this is a topic that almost all of us in this room don't know clinically the way s there does so for us it's anecdotal its empirical its episodic and when you look through the book the different chapters are a beautiful diagram of breaking through your own expectations your own delusions your own illusions so I was really impressed no way all right but a page 47 there's a gross error No so these and the topic itself the ten commandments - arguably three deal with this issue we were talking backstage I just did a quick little bit of research in the last three years in New York State now that we don't have the same process for dissolution of marriage anymore you have functionally no-fault divorce well over 50% of the filings are infidelity based and we now know that well over 50% of marriages end so this is rampant this is epidemic so I love your language when you say universally forbidden and universally practiced the the so that I want to pose to you the question that you posed here in the beginning of your book where should we begin when you want to take people through this topic where's the right place to start I'm gonna read it please that probably actually answers part of your question when I first became interested in the topic of infidelity I used to ask audiences if anyone had ever experienced an affair not surprisingly no hands went up there are not many people who will publicly admit to fooling around or being fooled bearing this in mind I changed my question to how many of you have been affected by infidelity in your lives overwhelmingly hands went up and have done so in every audience I have addressed this query by the way it's generally around 80% when I ask the children of the lover in the friend who's shoulder is wet from the tears the friend who is listening to the stories and of course the two major protagonists a woman saw a friend's husband kissing a beautiful stranger on the train now the question of whether or not she should tell her hangs heavy over her friendship a teenage girl discovered that her father's double life was as all that she was a mother cannot fathom why her son has stayed with that hussy as she refers to her daughter-in-law no longer welcome at Sunday dinners the echoes of secret and lies resound across generations leaving unrequited love and shattered hearts in their wake I'll continue afterwards but where I start is basically here is this subject that is ubiquitous that is the only commandment that is repeated twice in the Bible once for doing it and once just for thinking about it and it's funny because it's true and it has existed since marriage was invented and in many ways it has a tenacity that marriage can only envy and yet it is often treated with great judgment in very polarizing ways and I thought we can do better we need a new conversation we need a new model that helps people that is more compassionate that is more empathic and helps people deal with this crisis helps them get through it make sense of it and then decide what they want to do afterwards so how I began is by questioning generally when I start with the topic I start by looking at what was I told how was I trained what do I want a question here does this really appear the way that I was told it was and if not I start to go one by one at all the assumptions that underlie the conversation because if I change the assumptions I change the practice however one of the fundamental problems here is that you are asking for people to have an open mind on something that has always been culturally very absolutely despite the ubiquitousness of it it's wrong and if we discuss it in any way where you mitigate the wrongness at all that's dangerous so I can't have an open mind it has to be wrong and if it ever happens they're gone right how do you get past that when are you going back to the book and going back to the book because this was literally you know I couldn't move in the book until I had answered these questions right every time I would tell people I'm writing they would say are you for or against as if there's only two options and I would say yes you know and maybe with a more cryptic answer I could try to uncover some of the deeper layers of these of this issue I have every time I say I write about this I say this is not a justification this is not a condoning understanding doesn't make it right and sometimes things are hurtful that doesn't mean they're wrong and this is a big cultural distinction now the numbers aren't that different when you cross the pond to Europe versus the United States but how about the cultural expectations how is this received in the United States versus let's say in France so I have a French accent but I am NOT French but you said in France earlier that's why I said it wrong cultural it's presented as the kind of day you know the on the other side of discussion I think probably one of the big differences between a Latin European perspective and here is that it is it doesn't hurt any less let's be very clear it doesn't hurt any less but it isn't always experienced as wrong it is experienced as hurtful it doesn't have the same moral code attached to it and it can be just as gutting betrayal is betrayal deception is deception lies is lies but there is something about one's understanding that such thing can happen it's a bit of a yielding to the reality of life that you get so there is less of a shock that this could happen to me that is probably one of the nuances of difference and you're right the numbers are not different infidelity is the leading cause of divorce one of them at this point not different in Denmark or in France or in the US and that is what I think is really important for us to understand is what what are the ravages of modern infidelity how has this become the reason for ending relationships to the extent that it does does it hurt differently today than it used to what is specific to modern love and to the way we experience the breaches of trust and the betrayals of love today deep the one of the aspects of this is deep this is the it makes me uncomfortable but I want to know more I feel like why shouldn't be too curious you know it's yeah it's not easy you know you're lucky that you guys have the lights on you because I know there's a lot of oh not me I would never what she just said I've never thought that in my life but why is that page folded over because it's so not who I am the ending what your wife to the oh you threw me there first when so my wife when I was getting ready to do this my wife had heard about the book and a talk from a different friend and when she saw the book uh-huh in the apartment she said what are you reading that for that's far too deep for you this book and I said I thought it was about how to start fires here in the arm so language language matters you spend a lot of time and it's one of the things that's helpful I think and the discursive Nisour this book is language non monogamists as a category is something that will be an interesting proposition for people non-monogamous and fooling around even as loose vernacular you make a very strong case that there's really nothing fooling around about infidelity I know we refer to it that way but that was probably some type of inoculation against the reality of what it truly is that we started calling it fooling around so let's start with that why do you think it was called that when clearly the hurt the pain and the realities of it fly in the face of that type of you know a harm harmless label because certain words are meant to take the gravitas out of it if you say I fooled around you're trying to say don't worry it wasn't a big deal it's not a real threat to us it didn't mean anything but there is a lot of feeling when you try to make something be meaningless it doesn't mean there is no feeling in lack of meaning so you come up with a language by which you're trying to do some false reassurance sometimes that also curtails your accountability and you say it was just fooling around the the whole vocabulary of this topic is you know could be a study on its own there is no morally neutral terms the language is often so judgemental that it collapse it clasps in its bosom the impossibility of of talking about it and then it actually stops the conversation you know every time I would write a line I would feel like I had three others that I needed to add in order to round it up around the - - because everything stood when it stood alone just took on a meaning of its own and then it just took off and I felt like I had to constantly qualify it contextualize it layer it so that it really took on the truth of life and the fact that love is messy and infidelity even more so non monogamists yes sounds like a pass those sounds like they're gonna get a pass people won't want to call people non monogamists because we're supposed to be monogamous if we're in the marrying state of mind all those great quote 1908 GB Shaw that paraphrasing that marriage is among the most insane delusive passions that requires you to swear that you will remain in that state until death which you know which was smart once I read it three times because my wife was right you know I didn't get it the first time was that you come into it you'd make a distinction between a rata sysm marriage romance you know that the language matters these things mean different things you come into it one state of mind through passion that is not the sustaining principle and most of these true partnerships of marriage and that's something people don't know when they get into it and they can't figure out how to reconcile when they're trying to figure out whether or not they have to get out of it so this whole discussion this whole topic is right in the center of it so how do you get people open to the idea that they need to look at the infidelity as more than just its own reality you know they mean that it's more important to examine to be open to than just the fact that it happened because where we end our analysis right so many people will tell me that in the aftermath of an affair they are actually having conversations with the level of depth and honesty that they haven't had in years is this the non-monogamous hours this this is this is you know this is the copper this is both of them people sometimes look some Affairs are break it so I don't get to see much of they go to the lawyer the others come to me so I have people that want to remake it it's different or they want to figure out if there is something left with which to remake something and they may or may not do that together but they are giving each other some time otherwise they that's not me they call and in when I say the non-monogamous I I needed what was I gonna call these people all the time cheaters betrayers philanderers perfidy womanizer what's the vocabulary so I chose one but that was all very effective I want I'd used every word I could and on occasion I also could use the one that was not monogamous because because I I began to understand a number of things and one of them was that if I just call this person the betrayer there were times when in fact this betrayal was one of many in the relationship and that betrayal sometimes comes in many forms indifference neglect contempt violence it was often very tempting to want to see this betrayal as the one that tops all others and societies on the side of the person who went elsewhere not on the person but on societies on the side of the person who withheld not on the person who went elsewhere and so I also on occasion just called it non-monogamous not because it was an endorsement of anything but it was one descriptor to say this person wasn't less committed this person wasn't less of a parent this person wasn't less of a breadwinner this person this person was the one who was non-monogamous what do you see as the right way to approach an understanding of whether or not something can be learned from the infidel so you're sitting in there that the room with one of them if you're lucky both of them and this comes out as something where they believe this is the end of the conversation this happened that's it there's nothing worth talking about there's no value in this other than the fact that it happened how do you see the infidelity what are the possibilities of positive growth that come out of something like that so if you come to me the day after I will tell you in this moment you have just been broken shattered gutted you don't believe anything I don't I know you don't trust him or her but I also know that you probably don't even trust yourself and your own perception it isn't just because you feel like you've lost your partner but you sometimes feel like you have lost your sense of self you have a crisis of identity you are undergoing at this moment this is not all in one breath you know the the shattering of the grand ambition of love which is really why I think this has become so beyond painful in the way more than it used to be and I normalize it and I normalize it and I say to the other person did you imagine this did you at any moment consider this and you know sometimes they have and sometimes they haven't and when they see the person break in front of them it is just unbearable to know that I am the one who caused that the next thing I want to see in the learning is is the person who hurt the other person able to have remorse and guilt for what they have done even if they think that what they experienced there was very important to them you still created something here are you able to own that and that means that you have to be able to take in with empathy the pain the raw pain that is in front of you and then from there we go through a trajectory that covers the crisis phase and then the inside phase and then the vision phase and one of the things that I know will help people in what they will learn is not the first phase the first phase I can go into details but it really is you know what I do is I provide calm structure reassurance and sometimes I have to say your experience and your feelings about the affair are not the same as your experience and your feelings about your entire 26 years together don't make this become the fatal blow that redefines all of that because it's not always like this for everything I'm gonna say I'm gonna say there is other examples you know it's like so then if I see people who are able in the midst of this fraca to also say you know but I know that while this was going on you know he or she has been there for my dying parent he or she has been there like Dawson in the book one of the I'm sure that's not his real name but one of the people I just want to interrupt because I thought it was an interesting flip on this so Dawson is one of the people in the book one of the couples that has been through the therapy and he says I was there for you when your brother came to live with us I was there with the cancer I was there for you with all these things you can't just judge me by where I and then there's a different phrase that he uses alone you can't judge me by this alone how often is there any type of positive reception to that idea it depends when in the process two days after no seriously you have lost your entire quota of entitlement you are done you have lost your entire credibility so what are you in this conversation there's a lot of people here this is me talking to Dawson I got to get up in 2 hours and 15 minutes now I'll never go to sleep I want you to know that so immediately you can't do that because you have no sense of anti-aging it's all about in the in the first moment the focus is on the person who has just woken up one person's nightmare may be ending but the other one has just started let's be very clear you may have told this you know because you can sleep anymore three years later because you wanted to be good because you wanted to come clean you know did you do this for me or did you do this for you so now that I'm sure what I'm being accused of right now so you're saying that when he comes forward when Dawson says okay I admit it that's for him sometimes that's not doing anything that's very conciliatory yes sometimes you really want to know did you do this because you were actually thinking that that's what your partner wants to know or did you do this to cleanse your conscience and what is the other person to do with this now you've got them all against me now you happy you know I have worked I think it's important to kind of say when you say it's not his name I had 1500 letters after I gave the TED talk about Affairs the majority of the people who wrote to me we're hurt men and straying women the two groups that talk to least then I went around the globe and I have worked with hundreds thousands of people on this thing and there is not one word in this book that is inventive but that also says that there isn't one story there this is a broad topic you know when you go into the Dawson he happened to have been there for his wife and then he says to her and this is going to become everything about me I've heard the but I've also heard you know where he was nowhere to be seen where he's emptied the life savings okay you know it this is a he that I'm thinking about and and that that convert those words coming out of this or or another guy who I think Ian wrote about him and I remember he was like you you know I would never do earth sure I would never you know I have least I'm not sleeping and this and he meanwhile had mistreated her terribly for years for years and I finally just really had to say you know my dear betrayal comes in many forms you really think you have the moral superiority because you didn't do that and to myself I thought maybe you just not nice enough see that's the tricky one of this the whole thing is just that hits home awesome the this is a sticky wicket this entire discussion which is why the books genius in its actuality in its authenticity is very helpful because there's stairs saying there's nothing there's nothing really it's all subjective right of course it is but that these are actual clinical experiences is very helpful in understanding it because this idea of okay you did the bad thing but now we have to be open to this discussion of what is a bad thing what is perfidy what is this what is a breach of faithfulness what is the breach of the valve and if somebody you'll hear this it didn't happen for no reason now that is another tricky component of this because you can't blame the victim but in the therapeutic setting you wind up coming around to the idea of well if we want to see something if we want to sustain if we want to persist after this event we have to understand what went into it I read it I get it I remember it from your first book as well that is not an easy thing to coach the victim because why does somebody want to be open to what it is that they could have possibly done that would make this person do something that was so obvious and hurtful that is never the way I think you created a causality now yes why would you use and then it becomes blaming the victim yes I am looking at a context there is a relationship I look at the relationship in its entirety and I want to know is there something that happened in the context of the relationship that was going on as well you still made your choice alone two people are responsible for the relationship one person chooses to have an affair that is very clear but sometimes these experiences have nothing to do with the relationship that is one of the biggest surprises for me in writing explain that how does it ever how can it have nothing to do with the relationship I love my wife I love my husband I love my husband between two men two women I'm having an affair I have no intention of leaving I have no intention of going anywhere else what we have is dear to me I am experiencing something I never in my lifetime thought I would do the majority of people that I see are not chronic philanderers they are people who have often been faithful for years decades they themselves find themselves crossing a line they never thought they would cross and then I begin to find out what is it and that idea what you have just said is one of the big assumptions that that guides the conversation at this moment Affairs are a symptom of a problem relationship either there's something wrong in your relationship either there's something wrong in you but it is a symptom model it's a deficiency model and in fact sometimes the meanings in them you know have been the motives have to do with loneliness and and and resentment and rejection and sexual frustration and all the negative stuff that can happen but sometimes it has nothing to do with that and that to me became much more interesting it's like it's like a mating in captivity well I would not have written a book about people who don't get along and don't want to be sexually intimate with each other that's so what but people who would come in and say we love each other very much we have no sex that became really a question for me and the same thing began to happen here I my partner is an amazing person and they go on and on and on and I'm having an affair which is not always described as I'm having an affair sometimes is can you love two people at the same time the questions become very different and from that place I decided that I'm not going to always look at it blanket as just a symptom but I will look at it for its own meaning and when you explain that to a partner you know it's a very different story this has nothing to do with you you had a good relationship and you are an incredible partner the fact that you're going to understand what may have happened how you lost each other how you became complacent to each other how you cease to have any depth with each other how you all those things that happen in marriages that is that is not a cause that is not a blame and to shift the conversation from from reaction to reflection from blame to understanding is ultimately what helps people overcome this overcome this so that do you know so that they don't destroy everything they had because of that sometimes it has to but not always what do you think the numbers are look I did not deal with numbers because the numbers about you know are from 28 to 70% or depending on the definition there's too much subjectivity in terms of the actual circumstances no universally agreed-upon definition of infidelity so the I went for the stories behind it I worked like an ethnographer story after story to try to see other themes here and and I came up with a few themes that I hear for the people who do it so that when I would ask myself why do people do this thing why would people risk losing everything they have been together for what for what and it's not for sex not only it's a little more complicated than that so I you know we don't know the numbers if there's a subject that people lie about it's sex and even more so forbidden sex so men exaggerate men boast men inflate and women have always had to face much more dire consequences including the nine countries where she can still be killed for straying and so she has learned to be quiet but we don't know the truth about these things all we know in the past is that there were all kinds of babies that didn't have the color of your hair and now we don't have that anymore so now what is it is it porn is it the chatroom is it a massage with a happy ending is it going back on Facebook to reconnect with your exes is it staying active on your dating apps what you're already seeing somebody for X amount of time where where where is that line you say that the line is that there's an equation there what creates infidelity full disclosure I was gonna skip this over when I was going through the book I was like I know what it is and I just read through all of it actually I really have no idea but where that where the line is where it isn't because yes their poses these fail you know if the person's online you know what is that what if he never meets somebody or what if she never meets the person but this is what if it's just an emotional connection there is no emotional connection so you came up with three components secrecy sexual alchemy which would be a great name for a band by the way and emotional involvement so take us through that how does that take shape so because we've been seeing this right I mean with with social media adaptations and we know the scandals that we've seen publicly about it but well I never met them well it's just online you know I don't even know I don't even know who they are how do you adapt these three components to it and I get that the line and where you come up in the book is it's subjective obviously people are going to weigh these things differently of course but how do those components play out in terms of what should have in mind when they're analyzing behavior so I'm gonna link this to something that you were asking me before when I said to you that so many times people have dis conversations afterwards this what I'm going to tell you now is part of the conversations that you wish people would have when things are good in the relationship not after a crisis it's like this crisis propels you to the essence and then you start to actually talk for real because people avoid them before and why is it subjective it's subjective because you no longer have major religious institutions and you no longer have pregnancy and mortality and some big things to kind of define the lines today on the internet you can have massive amounts of engagement that are sexual without being physical what does that mean you know so I decided I would look at it structurally by definition an affair or any infidelity is organized around a secrecy the secret is the constitutive element of this subject if it's not secretive it's about something else and that secret it has multiple ramifications because it is also intergenerational it gets passed on but from generation to generation these secrets they become part of the DNA of people's lives the secret is corrosive on one side and can be very titillating on the other the secret is for many people the place where for the first time they're actually experiencing something that is just their own but then you need to match that with emotional involvement to one degree or another I mean even hit-and-run has a certain commercial component to it so there is a human dimension to that and human emotional experience to it from a full love affair and a parallel life to an anonymous hookup there is feeling and then the most interesting one for me was the concept of sexual alchemy and alchemy became the key word because when I would ask people all over the world what is one thing that they experienced the word that they came up no alchemy no what is alive alive they feel alive I would never come up with that it doesn't matter how many words they feel alive they feel like for the first time in a long time they experience a sense of aliveness of energy of renewal of vitality that they haven't felt in themselves or in their life in a long time okay so when they say that the immediate pushback is you are so selfish that you wrecked did that just for that with all these other responsibilities and things you don't think that I want to feel alive you get to go feel alive and I'm not alive and now by the way you killed me essentially so now you're alive and I'm dead and all because of what you do that's right that is the show it is selfless welcome to my life it is selfish affairs are plots of entitlement Affairs are things that you give to yourself with a host of rationalizations for why you deserve it always and indeed sometimes my aliveness kills you and you are gonna tell me you think I liked it the way this was know because now I have you know an affair will light up the scorecard of a relationship and all the compromises that you are willing to make for the greater good you done because I have taken out all the reasons for why you were willing to accept things that you didn't want to accept but you didn't do what I did which sometimes you're jealous about which sometimes you're even jealous about you would never do it but you wished you could have done it it's this kind of thing so you mad at me twice really you're mad at me that I did it and you're mad at me that I did it and you didn't yes yes that sounds like marriage that's like a real you know that's where it really gets in there you know that's it so the heaviest piece of metal in the world it's amazing the weight that comes with the ankle because that would never exist in any other relationship you're mad at me for what I did and you're mad because you didn't do it yes that's only in marriage it doesn't ever do it goes further and it goes further and then the alchemy is really this idea that you know the kiss that you only the erotic is such that a kiss that you only imagine giving can be just as powerful as hours of lovemaking you don't have to have the act to have the energy longing is fully understood that with your erotic mind you can live an entire life an entire love story in your head that takes you completely away from your partner without ever touching anybody and that's wrong because you really sold it when you said it there that's why I was reminding them it's not a how-to course that were given here the third component then winds up being the one that used to be said in isolation emotional involvement right this is something that's been used as an excuse and an explanation time in memoriam with this she meant nothing he meant nothing to me it was nothing more it was no sex therefore it meant not and then in the social media it's okay you never met them but you're like really into them you're connected to them it's emotional and that's even more hurtful than the physical that's how we've seen those made manifest what is your reckoning on that dynamic you know for me to understand emotional infidelity since from my wife I knew this was gonna happen these are just questions for later I have all the time I can't go home so it's it's fun naki keep going so the emotional involved emotionally in what is called to the emotional infidelity is that you have gone to someone else to share parts of yourself that you ought to share with me that I expected you to share with me and a part of that has to do to that concept of emotional infidelity really is rather recent and it comes along with the more marriages became the quest for the soulmate so journalist I'll explain listen I you can say it's right it's wrong it's right well I am trying to give dignity to the people and if I'm just gonna say one word things I will never help the people who come to me because I can think this is wrong but I'm also seeing this person who still wants to live with this person what am I going to say to this person I'm gonna shame him or her for still caring loving even admiring the person that has just cracked him open and I have to be able to hold both things that's why I continuously work from a dual perspective what it did to me and what it meant for you if I just go and I cut you I also cut the life line of this person who sometimes wants to find a way to feel okay about still choosing to be with you which today has often become the new shame it used to be that divorce was the stigma now it's choosing to stay when you can leave that's the new stigma that's the Hillary Clinton story and that means now that not only do I have your secret but on top of it I'm protecting you to my friends to whom I cannot talk now because they're going to judge me for not throwing the dog and the curb so now I have a double secret I lie about what you've done to me and I allowed to them about the fact that I still want to be with you and because of that I can't just go and throw these kinds of words at people not in my role two questions yes one is for you but I'll ask that second I can't really see so you have a little bit of a degree of N and M no it's better this way no I'll tell you why who after listening because this is you know objectively this is very persuasive this is somebody who spent so many years understanding something not just conceptually but empirically seeing it lived out that's it's a that's a dynamite combination how a show of hands it's not the question you think it's kind of big although you deserve it after how you've been laughing at me for the last 35 minutes who is open to the idea that god forbid this ever happened haha but God forbid this ever happened in your own life god forbid nobody wants to have to deal with this although maybe there is something that positive that could come out of it but we'll put that to the side who's even open to the possibility that you would try to weather that kind of storm and find a way through it and stay with the person what a bunch of liars look at it this is a more honest answer than the one you typically get I would have raised my hand if I were there especially if I thought I had any eye contact with you okay so that's it that's interesting right because do you make of this me nothing I ask question and my question for you yeah I've given enough the here's my question for you and I see how you've spelled it out here several different ways with the range of moral backstops that people have here there's an interesting dialogue component to the book where it's this happened well it's always wrong that guys got to go and somebody said well hold on you know that's we have to be a little bit more subjective and then there's you know they know it's not subjective do you ever think maybe when you were coming up with non-monogamy as a concept do you ever think to yourself this is a really hard thing for people to be in successfully over a long time that marriage really really is work hard not unnatural but difficult difficult okay difficult man please so our model today is that I want you to be whatever we always wanted from marriage companionship economic support family life social status I also want you to be my best friend my trusted confidant my passionate lover for the long haul a long haul that's twice as long as it used to be I want you to be my best parent my intellectual equal the one to inspire me in my career I want you to be my anchor and my wave I want you to offer me security and stability and predictability and I want you to give me transcendence and all a mystery and surprise it's one person to give us what once an entire village choose to provide that is the modern concept hence it goes further it goes further because I there's a union analyst Robert Johnson who I thought gave me away and it's something to think about that was really brilliant in our secularized society romantic love has become the most important engine of the Western psyche so we turn to romantic love for things that we used to turn for in religion ecstasy meaning wholeness transcendence all of those things we used to look for in the sanctuary of the divine and today I want you my beloved to offer all these things to me so when you say marriages work I always ask you which model of marriage first then I will know which is the work we need to do marriages of today that managed to meet this in which we conflate the spiritual and the relational by calling our partners our soulmates do better than all the marriages of the past that's the research of Eli Finkel in his new book but the vast majority can't meet this new Olympus you understand the why is it always that I don't understand I think I'm thinking I'm thinking I might keep telling you it's deep so it's deep let's dig you had like you know 30 variables that go into the marriage if you listen to what people tell each other in the vows is this when they get mad when they make their own oh my god I hate that was that just me I hear and I'm like oh listen to this guy with thee you know that he got like a look at her as a day before he like you know just cranked it out he called his one friend it was a lit match you know but he promises her the moon you know and you think my god if these people succeed till first honeymoon that will be amazing it's like what people are so it has always been when you pick a person you pick a story and this is the story you're gonna write together and it has you edited you edit it I one day came up with this lion after mating and it just became one of the most hopeful lines actually when I work with people who are struggling with infidelity I said most of us these days are gonna have two or three marriages or two or three committed relationships in our adult life some of us are gonna do it with the same person alright so how does that manifest itself it means we you know we got together and we had one particular contract with each other about into dependency one particular style of relationship in which we negotiated our what was separate and what was together one particular power dynamic between the two of us one set of rules around sexual boundaries between the two of us all kinds of things that at some point people we knew their license regularly people don't renew their marriage ever they think that they think that they began with in their 20s or 30s just is gonna go like that for thirty forty years without ever sitting down and just saying how is this Union how is this little enterprise of us doing what's it like for you where are we at shareholder meeting yes yes yes marriage shareholder meeting in which people actually you know but not from a consumer perspective is this a good deal for me you know am I getting my needs met but really what have we built together what matters to us here how do you see this continuing what are the things that that that would make you want to go elsewhere do you think they need a therapist to help through that part of the transition or do you think that can be done in isolation between the two of you so I don't have to tell you my gut on it is it's a tough renegotiation if you whoever opens that subject I think is looking for a beat-down yeah I think whoever says hey you know I'd like to grab some coffee today you have to oh you have time no but that's me I want to rethink you know if you want coffee or do you want to talk about our marriage I'm gonna want to drink it in a very soft cup in case it gets thrown at my head I think it's going so how do you motivate because I think it's actually something how many of you are married or in committed relationships of any kind please it's like less hands went up wow this is really helpful this book is it Teresa who's married you get one coroner committed less hands I mean if that doesn't tell you the truth of the situation nothing I usually ask a difference if we just answered how many of you would like to be in a relationship no II would like to be out of the relationship at least on occasion this is also a good show of hands of the people who didn't come with the other person that they're with I tell you why I bring it up there we all know anybody who's in a committed relationship knows that it's work and so commonly even outside a major crisis you see people are not committed to the work and we all know couples like that in our own lives where somebody's just so grossly advantaged and disadvantaged within it but I think that the idea of how you broach this subject is a meaningful one because I think there's a lot of utility to it not not to sanitize this or make it antiseptic but you have life changes you know you get married you're one age you're one set of dreams one set of aspirations life changes and is made manifest and whatever happens between you and there is a need for RIA proach Minh figuring out how is it different now you know now we're raising kids well now the kids are grown now what do we do I mean these are all huge things that certainly can't just easily evolve without any kind of reconsideration that's why I wonder what is the right mechanism for the look it's very clear to me that every relationship anybody like this first I imagine a world where people can experience a sense of vitality and aliveness in their relationship why because ultimately it's the quality of our relationships that will determine the quality of our lives more than anything else friendship hasn't changed too much in the last 200 years sibling relationship hasn't changed too much if there is one being unit that has undergone an extreme makeover it's the couple and in the past you heard every fight that couple had because the walls were porous and the windows were open today your friends can divorce and you're surprised because you didn't see it coming that's the kind of isolation that most couple live in more pressure to succeed more pressure to be happy more pressure to do well and less input more time with the kids more time at work and less with each other with a list of expectation that's like that so to then say that you know what on occasion you go to a retreat you go to therapy you sit with a few friends together that you really trust and you are and you analyze life every other organism needs to grow in order to thrive if it goes stale it will fossilize and what happens sometimes unfortunately is that this crisis propels people to actually you know what happens in the beginning of a relationship you live face-to-face and you gazing into each other and then you spend years living side-by-side and what this crisis does to some people is it puts them back face-to-face to realize what they stand to lose to realize that they actually loved each other and they haven't said it to each other in so long to realize that they actually wouldn't imagine a life without each other and that raw pain is actually shared by both people and it's that that you want to reconnect them with because what do I want to know if I still if I remember it if we work distinct true is that you choose we choose each other again and we're starting a second marriage with each other that's when this thing can actually produce something that you don't wish it you know it didn't need to happen for that but sometimes nothing else seemed to have done it nothing else had the force of ravage that this thing could draw people in questions from the audience oh this is a villain all right when would you tell the non-monogamous don't tell PS that's my advice to friends who ask me am I wrong it's a great question so you know why do you want to tell and what is it you want to say do you want to say what is it you want to say I've fallen in love somewhere else I slept with somebody I got stuck in a hotel I have I have an STI what is it you need to tell is that telling caring for the person that you're saying it to or is that caring ultimately making you feel better do you have any idea if your partner wants to know if that person's partner wants to know do you do you know and you don't know in advance so many people thought they wanted to know and then tell me I wish I had never known I can't get it out of my head you know but what I say is slow it down don't just say yes or no slow it down there are consequences and the price to truth-telling and there are consequences and the price to secrecy and sometimes when a person asks a question ask them first do you want to know the answer to your question or do you want your partner to know that you have the question it's like I want you to know that I'm thinking about this but I'm not so sure I want the answer because once you have the answer your entire life is about to change don't when you have friends I think sometimes the best thing is to let them figure it out and to ask them the right questions and not to push our own opinions on them because we never have to live with the consequences of that they do what are the best words to use when you would like to end a relationship with someone and they want to work on it those are beautiful questions what you want is marvelous what you want is beautiful I wish on anyone else to have somebody who wants to continue and to persevere the way that you don't want to do it with me but I don't want to anymore I don't want to be with you anymore I want to go and I want you to bring that energy and that fervor and that commitment to someone who will be able to respond I can't say goodbye without ever hurting you this will hurt badly I will live with that forever but I have made up my mind we have to be willing to own that you're going to break someone's heart and that you're gonna live with you can't have it both ways I don't feel the same way about you now that I did before you said I mean this is one of the many verses yeah that's just right no but that's just terrible to hear sister I'm not even focused on the questions now I just I don't even know what I'm gonna do now how do you explain oh this is good how do you explain and define the infidelity to the children do you discuss or hide so first of all my first question is always how old are the kids the question is a developmental question you do not answer the same way to a four-year-old that probably should not be mired into the adult messes so a 12 year old who stumbled on your computer or to a 14 year old who doesn't understand why you are leaving their mother or their father which they thought you have a life with and cannot understand because you can't tell them my husband hasn't touched me in 12 years what are you going to say to them you want them in your bedroom No so by definition you're going to try to say positive things about the partner and you will be accused as the person who is unfaithful for destroying the family who should do the talking I think that it is every parent with every child alone you talk differently to different children who goes first I mean I have plenty of examples of the children I have one case in the podcast actually in where should we begin where the children three of the children - one of them doesn't talk to her because she chose to stay with him he cheated on her for forty years and and dating she has Stockholm Syndrome and they just cannot accept that she to hurt they don't talk to her let alone to him then I have the person who is the person who leaves with someone else and has never talked about anything to their children about their marriage but why would they and certainly not about what happens in the bedroom of their marriage and then you know when they leave the adult kids one doesn't invite him to the wedding the other doesn't you know so it's different scenarios with different children you have by that stage a very personalized relationship with each child and they will have different conversations with you it's not a pact it's not like when you have parents who are going to announce to their children that they are divorcing and they're presenting you know this is we will be changing our family from here on this is a very different story and the degree to which you involve people i I am of the belief that if your children are not part of that story you don't involve them I've had people who tell the five-year-old why mommy is crying and he should know and they know what kind of a a-hole his father is and what is that is doing to the child so there is people who use the children to share with them they rage their raft their broken hearts their vengeance there are people who have the children who stumble on a whole digital archive and need to help these children make sense of who is this father of theirs you know what are these when it's digital archive it's a parent it's a mother of thought it doesn't matter who is this person who just you know what is all of this and then it's a different conversation and it's a it's not a one-time conversation this story is going to unfold over years I need hope yes in the book you talk about the hope of what can come out of this how this is also withering and real and raw and hard and mean or neglectful but ultimately all negative how do you get to the point where you know what is the mechanism what is the what is the dynamic that allows us to move from a place that is so dark to anything that approaches light but this is what happens when you go to a crisis it is danger and opportunity and when you go to the Hope what starts to happen is that you begin to the people for me who've managed to transform this will tell you we have a relationship today that is so much stronger than what we ever had more open more honest more intense more alive we wish I didn't have to go through this but this took us you know for a ride and what we you know I am I would not have wanted to go back to the marriage that we had but you depends when you asked if I asked this in one or two years right after no what I went to do is I looked at people 5 10 15 years later and they didn't say you know when she cheated on me when they said we had a crisis it became a wee story and we rewrote our story after this crisis and we became the authors of the new chapters of our life and you know we we really you know it's something needed to change and this is what made it happen it becomes a very different way of talking about this those are the people who when you go later they say you know there's such a sense of victory over not having let this thing ruin them and over having actually turned it into a better relationship it's not semantics it's it's subjective it's it's substantial when they're saying it's our story it's because that's what they decided to do with it yes how do you consider happy endings and it started the question it started then they crossed it out what do you consider half the endings but they crossed that out although that would have been an interesting question also so happy endings how do they fit into this I mean what I just described is a kind of happy ending a happy ending to to the way that the story starts very dark and becomes hopeful that's one version if I don't understand I thought he was the the question was going to like does that count as cheating oh that's not what they meant that's just where my head is I think that there may be like how do you how do you how do you find something positive in this and that's what you were just talking about but I'm saying the reason I ask it again in this way is because it's a little definitional right you know I don't think of it in terms of happy and right no it's not that's what we want we want we want it to be better we want that if we're gonna go in there and we're going to do the therapy after something like this we want to come out on the other side better right that's how weird and sometimes the better is with you with my partner in the way that I just described and sometimes the better is that I decided this was not the relationship I wanted to be in and I was going to love differently and be loved differently than what you and I had indeed in together I think that for me this is not about happy ending but it is something that is an important point is that we still in our society consider longevity the marker of success of a couple I'm married 35 years half the time people clap like I'm some relic of the past you know you know like like I did it like you know and some relationships end and they were good they accomplished what they needed to accomplish people had children together people dealt with illness people buried their parents people dealt with earthquakes people dealt with economic downturns people supported each other these were strong good relationships and they end and I think that to me is an ending that needs to become included that but if by definition when it ends we say it failed it's a failed marriage we are not doing service neither to the marriage nor to the commitment and the endurance that people have sometimes for 20-30 years and then it ends and we say it failed it's not fair is that PC right that would be that'll be the pushback that'll be the push package that's political correctness you're trying to make it all okay but at the end of the day there are moral absolutes and you get married it says till death do us part anything short of that is failure this cheating is failure you can spin it any way you want maybe we will move past it when we will stay together but it's theirs I'm not getting any I'm not learning anything from it if somebody cheated on me this is about what they learned because they were the problem it this is hard wired stuff in people yes since the 1300s when you know marriage came into common existence can I give you a few others that were really hardwired and equally moral yes virginity how many come on Hamid they are plenty of people here in this room who remember what it would have been like morally if you had had sex before marriage so we used to marry and had sex for the first time now you marry and you stop having sex with others and that was a moral in homosexuality a moral and a pathologizing one I mean they have been so many you know monogamy monogamy was one person for life for all of history I have patients who tell me you know I am monogamous in all my relationships and it makes perfect sense to them that's a sociopath I know they have had two marriages they were monogamous in every marriage but all right that's not what I thought No but these were absolutes the idea that it would be one person for life no now it is one person at a time the idea that when you married you couldn't live even if you were miserable and beaten to pulp you couldn't live especially as a woman because let's face it this topic of infidelity is not a gender equal story this is a story that has a double standard throughout history men practically had license to cheat and women were punished for everything if she seduced him if she was the lover and if you know there is no homewrecker in the masculine I mean this whole conversation is is rigged from from all kinds of moral relative things so the fact that some people would say it is wrong it is not what you promised it is not in our contract is a given but for many people the story is not about broken contracts it's about broken hearts and they need help to mend their broken hearts and rage and wrath and moral judgment on them and on their partner and on everything they have created before doesn't help them so we need if it's that pervasive we need something a little bit more compassionate that doesn't make it right that doesn't condone it but it's helpful how did I like your push box it's good it was kind of half-hearted to be honest with you I mean the the because I just don't I just don't believe that I've never believed it I've always thought that I believe that there is first of all here's what I believe but here's what here's why I'm giving some context to it I see so much of this you know I mean I've spent years and years of my life cataloging disastrous marriages you know because they spawned so many great crime stories that I've covered over the years and intimacy between two people as always the basis of some of the most bizarre human behavior but I do think that anybody who's been married while this Thanksgiving it'll be sixteen years for me and Christina for my for my wife and I came from a family where you know my mother and father were you know my father used to wince when he would think about life before he was married and it was real like he really believed that he really was like yeah no I I was not married at some point but I've been married my entire life to Matilda and they were of a generation where I don't care what happened now being physically abused being emotionally abused that even for their generation that was understood as something that was never supposed to be acceptable supposed to be acceptable but at the end of the day it is so hard to stay married it's hard for people and people don't know this when they get into it they don't talk about it while they're in it unless they're like drunk or there's some flashpoint that everybody knows about so they might as well talk about it anyway and it's one of probably I think one of the most common realities that is ignored in normative behavior if you if you think about it I mean you know you guys all say you have except for their weird imbalance with the hands thing I mean you know if you're in a relationship people tend not to talk about what is the most true thing about the relationship which is that it's work and that it's hard and that bad things are going to happen you're gonna have to find a way through and what I've seen in the spike of divorces which is new ish right it's easier to get divorced now it's not as expensive to get divorced now no no-fault divorce is much more prevalent the social acceptance of it is better now than it was a generation ago but when you hear people while they're getting out of it I'm often very unimpressed by their reasons and I'm of the school of thought to the person who asked the question I don't get involved I spend enough time in controversy in my day job in my personal life I try not to get involved in these situations but I often find the reasons that people are getting out or really a really Pettit especially when they have kids you know and especially when it's male that most traditional male dynamic of like you know the kids get to be like 11 12 13 and all of a sudden some guy starts to feel like he doesn't have his mojo anymore and you know he needs to be revitalized and all of a sudden there's like some new person in their life that could be their kid I mean we've all seen this play out so many times and while I don't judge the behavior I do think that it speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of the work involved and what the promises and the duty is that's involved but all these things are subjective that's what drew me to the book was that you create a framework of some objectivity the way you have to look at these dynamics if you want to make sense of them you can make them whatever you want if you don't want it to be rational but if you want it to be rational you have to look at it but this is probably what's harder than this what's harder than this look this one is among the most painful experiences you have because it is with someone that you're intimate with so to be betrayed by and definitionally you know you make a case in here not to make a definitional but definitionally this is the worst thing that you can do I'll tell you what's harder but this is me personally and this may be why I developed more but not positive but more resilient attitude to this experience you know and I never thought that with this were connected but one day it kind of so I am a child of two Holocaust survivors both my parents were the sole survivors of their entire family they were betrayed not by their partners but by humanity and they could have remained that dead inside not dead surviving but without any any jewelry of anything to strive for and yet they chose the other side and I came from a community in Antwerp that was all Holocaust survivors and they were two groups those who did not die and those who came back to life and I learned how people come true love again trust again have children because you know in that world you should better not have kids if that's what's going to happen and that gave me a real faith that this is possible they never doubted it that life was worth living and love again and make families and have sex and have pleasure and go dance and all of that that aliveness and from that place I draw my inspiration when I work with people who are shattered and think like this whole life that they've built has just been smitten to pieces and then I start to rebuild it because I know it's possible not for everybody and not all the time but there is absolutely nothing PC about that I believe that that is a true source of resilience because when people say when Trust is broken how do you heal and I think to myself you know I'm going back to Viktor Frankl and I'm going back to my parents this is the story has been written this is not the first time now sometimes you will heal it with somebody else not with the person who just broke it but I that's it I've said it I'm gonna read another place it's called from suspicions to certainty certainty is searing but knowing suspicion is its own kind of agony when we begin to suspect that our beloved is duplicitous we become relentless scavengers sniffing our desires carelessly strewn clothes and clues sophisticated surveillance expert we track the minute changes in his face the indifference in her voice the unfamiliar smell of his shirt her lackluster kiss we tally up the slightest incongruity I kept wondering what she had so many early meetings at the office when she's supposed to start at 10:00 her Instagram posts didn't match where she said she was dates don't lie he was puzzling that he had to take a shower and put on deodorant before going for his run that's a rookie mistake [Laughter] all of a sudden she was so eager to invite Brad and Judy to dinner went for so long she didn't even like them does he really need his phone in the bathroom at first we may keep our questions to ourselves afraid to falsely accuse if we're wrong even more afraid to face the facts if we right but eventually the desire to know Trump's the fear of knowing and we begin to probe and to interrogate we test asking questions to which the GPS has already given irrefutable answers we set traps every dark secret I'll discover better by pretending since a scheming figure who in Mozart's classic opera we act like we know when we only fear Anton tells Josie he has proof that she has been sleeping around there's no point in continuing to lie about it you can tell me he says I already know everything but it's a bluff feeling caught Josie tells him more than he ever had bargained for now he can't get the images out of his head in a common twist Josie tells me that initially Anton's suspicions had been unfounded however as his snooping increased so did her frustrations and evasiveness eventually resenting her life under surveillance she says he was so convinced I had been cheating on him all along that I decided to do it for real that's not a positive piece I should find a hopeful piece I should look for a hopeful piece I'll wait I love that you were I've made a note that you consulted on the Showtime series the affair and that scares me that that series they shot it out on Long Island right that's that's where I live and that is that what did you think when you started reading through what they wanted to do that I'll buy you some time to find something more positive than that dirge that you just read to was there the when you started reading what this was gonna be about what resonated with you in that story you guys know the show the affair right okay so one of the lines that became very clear to me and one of the most surprising findings when I began to look at this thing as why do people in happy marriages cheat he has a very good relationship he loves his kids he's happy with his wife he doesn't like his father-in-law okay is that sometimes when you turn to the gaze of another it isn't because you're looking for another partner but it is because you're looking for another self and he wasn't trying to leave his wife as much as he was trying to leave who he had himself become and that doesn't make him likable or anything like that but that notion that this man had a very he had an enviable life living in in Park Slope you know the hole he had an enviable life what was what and this had nothing to do with his marriage it has nothing to do with the relationship with his wife so it was his it was what it was the fact that she had decided you know that when he met his wife in college he needed structure in his life he needed somebody who was going to ground him he needed somebody who came from a family that that could provide something he needed someone to gig and then and then you know his demons caught up with him but that you only know in series three series one what you know is that he meets this and she meets this man and she lost a child and I did learn to ask many people who are in Affairs have you lost someone in the last two three years in your life because I began to see that for many people the presence of mortality is what will often push them to do that thing that they never thought they would do it could be in all kinds of parts of life this is just one situation and a parent who dies a friend who goes too soon and bad news at the doctor I can't tell you the amount of people who have seen have affairs when they have been sick themselves and they come out of there something about mortality makes people say is this it is there more am I going to live like that and and it gives them that that boldness that they would never have had before and so I start to see her she had a great relationship with her husband also it's like you know they were they were they they had lost a child and there was a grieving and and that she she couldn't leave herself anymore she saw it everywhere and so she throws herself into this complete abandoned where she you know and they destroy two sets of families I mean it's a but you know you're gonna make me again talk and it's not gonna be positive it's not gonna be able I don't make you say I don't think anybody could make you say anything well well but here look of course if you could be pollyannish about this if you could be you know if this was such an obviously optimistic situation we wouldn't need the genius that you apply to your book I wouldn't have done this if I thought it was a no-brainer and it was easy it's the difficulty it is the need to sometimes confront things that are hard that make your expertise so valuable not just in the clinical setting but for the rest of us who just want to read through this so you can have it in your head and if you're open enough to challenge some of your assumptions and not see that's what I was trying to get to earlier I think it's hard for people to do that I really do I think it is harder now eating the book changed anything for you I am open but I have heard so many people write to me who have read this and it's just coming out you know I started out I like you know but slow you made me see things you made me forgive my father he made me forgive my mother you made me understand I have a person in there who literally thinks that it is the worst thing that can happen to then realize that his father and his mother were actually in an affair and he was the child of that relationship I mean people discover things about themselves it you know and that's a change of perspective it's not just what do you think about is it a good thing or a bad thing that's not the question that is asked it's really do you do you get to understand the complexity of the human drama that comes through this without having to go to the Opera and and do you understand that when you read this you actually will also know how to create a relationship that can develop the buffers to possibly prevent it or pre-empted I think that not only do I agree with the premise I think that what the book does is you don't have to have this in place in your relationship from you to learn from the dynamics that's surrounding how to survive it because if it's not this crisis is going to be something else and that was eye-opening for me and also just the idea of what goes into both sides of it that's symptomatic nature you know your section not to help you find your own section of your book but page 226 I had marked when the affair preserves the marriage and the passage on 227 do you think that might fit the bill of what you'd like to leave you already to 26 to 26 I was actually looking no you see that what do you think of that No except fit the bill for you or not great tease though for those two pages of the book isn't it aren't you like what's to 26 to 27 I was gonna read you actually from the Transformers this is it so I want you to end the way you want it yes ironic as twisted as it may seem Matt and Maggie's perspective has a logic many people have affairs not to exit their marriages but in order to stay in them I have three more years till the kid no this is this is not a happy piece but I I have a different take on it but go ahead do it now let's do a question all right I may spin away but I won't let go my heart says yes but my head says no a gentle hug will pull me back in for another dance is it such a sim books better than you knew before interviewing an author this is an interesting crime not sure I understand it but maybe you'll understand it last question yeah have you ever counseled a couple who are themselves the perpetrators of an affair would you consider that constructive have I ever yes have I met couples were both partners we're the people who were unfaithful in their respective relationships yes I have not met their partners in those situations I don't meet both if this is the couple that shows up I will not meet the spouses so let's be very clear and what is the question if you is constructive yeah what do you do with that so one of the couples that actually I wrote about in the book they had known each other in college they left they both got married they both lived at different sides of the Atlantic and and they reconnect and they are absolutely torn they have kids they have young children they have prayer partners one has a better relationship than the other they have no desire to leave the kids to not be there and they are absolutely torn and that was the conversation I often do an entire day sessions and I sit and I let them figure it out I and and I just give them a safe space where they can actually think talk maybe say goodbye to each other which they probably have already tried to do I'm 10 times when I meet that couple that particular couple I don't feel like I'm sitting with perpetrators I'm sitting with two people who are in a crisis of love with each other and with their partners and I don't have an answer for this I can humbly lend my skills for people to figure out their own self-determination in their life and that's that's what I do in those moments I can't remember which page they're on but you'll recognize them noted psychotherapist mr. Rogers once said in a time of crisis look for the helpful people we have things that are difficult in marriage and they often revolve around infidelity we need the helpful people you are one of the helpful people thank you for writing the book thank you for talking [Music] you

Channel: The 92nd Street Y, New York

Views: 1,074,444

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Chris Cuomo, Esther Perel, Infidelity, marriage, relationships, love

Id: r0dVjeBNANA

Length: 87min 42sec (5262 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2017