How cheating can make your relationship stronger

He was married, she was a work colleague and it seemed like a fun “fling” — until his wife found out. But the betrayal was followed by a twist.

Nothing is more devastating for many of my clients than discovering their partner has had an affair.

Experiencing infidelity in a relationship can be hurtful and damaging and the immediate response after discovering a partner’s affair is usually a combination of disbelief, anger, sadness and grief.

One of my clients, a woman in her 30s, discovered her husband had an affair with a colleague when he was overseas attending a conference. She only found out when she went through his phone messages after he came back.

He didn’t deny it but was quite upset that she checked his phone. He explained it was “only a fling” — it just happened. The woman involved was also married and lived on the other side of the world. This was the first time he had cheated on his wife and he believed telling her would only have upset her.

Nowadays some therapists believe there are times when an affair can rescue a marriage or relationship and can even make it stronger. Starting to understand an affair and how it happened can help provide clarity and give answers to the many questions a couple may feel are still unanswered.

This is not about assigning blame, but a time to deconstruct the affair and find out where the roots of the infidelity started so they can make decisions on how their relationship can go forward.

Another client is a man who has been together with his wife for about 22 years and they have two teenagers. He hates his job, has to work long hours, his sex life with his wife is almost non-existent and he has been feeling depressed for quite a while.

He has just turned 50 and has started asking himself, is this all there is? For quite a while now, he has been friendly with a woman at work. They sometimes go out for lunch and he feels he can talk about anything with her; he feels understood.

He came to see me because he realised he was close to falling in love with her and didn’t know what to do. He felt very guilty even thinking about having an affair. His wife would probably divorce him if she found out and the children would be devastated.

Divorce used to be the taboo — now it is infidelity

Australians are cheating in record numbers — but it’s not always about the sex. Picture: iStock

WE NEED TO BE MORE FORGIVING OF INFIDELITY

There is a rather unforgiving attitude towards infidelity in Australia, which I believe is damaging and driving couples to divorce and children to suffer. Several European countries have more accepting attitudes and lower divorce rates.

I’m probably a bit more open-minded about infidelity than most as I believe that truly monogamous relationships are the exception, not the rule.

What has changed over the years is that many people now wait to marry or settle down until their late-20s or early-30s, and by then may have had already several relationships.

Then couples marry or settle down and suddenly they are expected to never have sex with anyone else again. From my experience, not too many couples actually discuss this before they move in together or get married; they take that as a given.

Another change in the past decade is the way we are cheating — it has become easier than ever.

WHAT COUNTS AS CHEATING?

We need to ask ourselves: what exactly is cheating? Flirting with a colleague at work? Having a massage with a happy ending? Having sex with your partner while fantasising about someone else? What about texting, sexting or sending naked pictures to friends who are not your partner?

We have the internet now and we can have steamy chat room conversations with strangers and have cybersex with anyone who is keen. I have several clients who are taking part in this. They tell me there is no physical sexual contact, it’s exciting, it isn’t cheating, and nobody will find out. But some studies suggest that online affairs can trigger emotional infidelity and, when discovered, can also trigger feelings of anger, jealousy and insecurity in the other partner.

New book Sex Down Under is available now. Picture: Supplied

WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE AFFAIRS?

People usually don’t have affairs with the intention of hurting their partner, but the result is mostly extremely painful. The reality is that staying faithful to one person in a relationship can be difficult and challenging.

However, a large percentage of affairs are not just about sex. Both men and women often start affairs because they don’t feel appreciated by their partners; they feel neglected or ignored and may crave intimacy.

They enjoy the feeling of being wanted, needed and desired, and often are looking more for an emotional connection rather than just a sexual one. When people feel trapped in a routine, when there isn’t much joy and fun anymore in a relationship, an affair can be an escape. Romance in the relationship may be missing.

Many believe that women more often complain about lack of romance, but men feel it, too. Men don’t like their once sexy lover turning into a nagging wife and women often feel criticised, undervalued or just lonely or bored.

Why do people have affairs? Picture: iStock

But one of the main reasons may be the fact that most people have unrealistic expectations about what a happy relationship looks like, and that they should be enjoying the kind of sex we see in movies or porn.

HOW AFFAIRS CAN SAVE A MARRIAGE

Couples therapist Esther Perel — the author of Mating in Captivity, a book that has been translated into 25 languages — lectures around the world on the subjects of love and sex. She used to ask her audiences if anyone had ever experienced an affair and, not surprisingly, usually no hands went up. But when she asked, ‘how many of you have been affected by infidelity in your lives?’ many hands went up.

Perel, who presented the brilliant Ted Talk “Rethinking Infidelity”in 2015, believes that we need to create a safe space for productive conversation, where the multiplicity of experiences can be explored with compassion.

“Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships: what we expect, what we think, want, and what we feel entitled to,” she says.

Perel examines why people cheat and unpacks why affairs are so traumatic: they threaten our emotional security. It’s a must-watch for anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on, or who simply wants a new framework for understanding relationships. In the end, infidelity is usually about a whole lot more than sex.

This is an edited extract from SEX Down Under by Matty Silver, New Holland Publishers RRP $29.99 available from all good book retailers or online www.newhollandpublishers.com.