Hello and welcome to Reimagining Love.

I'm Dr. Alexandra Solomon.

Relationships have the power to wound us and the power to heal us.

As a clinical psychologist,.

Author, and professor at Northwestern University, I've devoted my life to studying intimate partnerships and family dynamics.

On Reimagining Love, I'm here to translate complex clinical topics into tools and takeaways that you can use in your relationships today.

If you're ready to develop relational self-awareness.

And create vibrant and loving relationships with the people who matter most to you, you've come to the right place.

I'm so glad that you're here.

Thank you for joining me here for another solo episode of Reimagining Love.

You know, I talk a lot about infidelity in my work, and I do that for a few reasons.

Cheating is common.

The topic of infidelity is scary.

So, I feel like we need to turn toward it thoughtfully and bravely.

And because there are things that we can learn that can help prevent infidelity from happening in our relationships.

And when infidelity happens, the people who are involved need and deserve care to support them in their growth and their healing.

There are three.

Sort of roles.

In an affair.

There's the person who's being cheated on.

There's the person who's cheating.

And there's the affair partner. And today.

I want us to dive into the psychology of being the affair partner.

And here's what I want to say right up top.

If you, dear listener, are in the throws of infidelity,.

You've been cheated on, or you're trying to decide whether to stay or go after infidelity,.

Or your relationship recently ended because of your partner's infidelity,.

Or your partner just broke up with you and is now building a relationship with their affair partner.

If you are in any of those categories,.

You are.

100%.

Free to press stop and not listen to this episode.

I will catch up with you next week.

And that's because although I'm certainly going to be challenging.

The affair partner to excavate what is happening inside of them that created the conditions for them to participate in an affair.

I am also.

Going to be holding on to the affair partner's.

Deep, deep humanity,.

The wounds that may have fueled this choice, the hidden benefits of being an affair partner, and the healing that likely needs.

To happen within themselves.

And right now, you may be wrestling with your own feelings of shame and grief and confusion and sadness and rage.

It is so much to process.

At some point in your journey, it might be really helpful for you to step into the shoes of the affair partner.

It might.

Help you look at what happened in a new way.

It might expand your perspective in a way that helps you take the infidelity.

Just even a little bit less personally by looking at all the factors that are beyond your control.

However,.

That point might not be today.

Today. It might be just exactly enough for you to validate your own pain,.

For you to find your own center,.

For you to make choices for yourself, to figure out your next steps in your relationship, etc., etc., etc.

This episode is going to be here for you if and when that might be helpful, and there is no need to.

Push yourself.

I also want to say if you are a listener who has zero connection whatsoever to infidelity,.

I still want you to listen because number one, you're going to learn a little something something about human nature by peering.

With me into an experience that is different than an experience that you've had in your own life.

And number two, the chances are unfortunately pretty good that at some point in your life, you're going to be dealing with.

Some facet of infidelity,.

A friend's infidelity, a co-workers, a family members.

And this episode is going to prepare you to keep a widened perspective.

That holds both personal accountability.

And compassion for humans and for how our struggles and our limitations.

End up showing up in our behavior and our choices.

Okay.

So now I'm turning my attention to the affair partner.

And for the rest of this episode I'm going to be speaking with you.

You who has been an affair partner.

And I want to set us up for success in this episode.

So, I'm going to give a few important notes and caveats before we begin.

Okay. Number one,.

I mentioned the three roles in an affair at the very top of this episode.

There's the person who's being cheated on, there's the person who's cheating, and then there's the affair partner.

And there are going to be times in this episode where I need to talk about the person that you're having the.

Affair with.

Or the person that you had the affair with.

I'm going to refer to that person as the betraying partner.

There's going to be times when we need to talk about the person who's being cheated on, and I'm going to refer.

To that person as the betrayed partner, and I'm going to talk about you as the affair partner.

And obviously,.

All of you are more than just that narrow role.

But for ease and clarity and simplicity of language.

Those are the terms that I'm going to use.

Okay. Number two,.

These roles might not be clearly.

Definable or perfectly definable.

Certainly, there are times when both partners within an affair are also in other relationships or other marriages.

So in that way both people are cheating on someone.

Both people are acting as the betraying partner and as the affair partner.

But in this episode I'm going to be at times talking about you the affair partner as if you are single.

You are sort of the third corner of this triangle and you are having an affair with someone who is married or.

Someone who's involved in a primary relationship.

But if you are someone who is both cheating on your own primary partner and also an affair partner visav someone someone.

Else's marriage or relationship.

Everything that I say is also relevant to you.

So please keep listening.

Number three.

Another caveat that I want to make sure that I offer right up top is this entire conversation is about infidelity.

It's about nonconsentual.

Non- monogamy. Right? There are lots of couples who create expansive sexual boundaries and relational boundaries within their relationships.

But what sets infidelity apart is that lack of transparency,.

That lack of disclosure, that lack of consent.

So this is a conversation where I'm talking to you as if you are perhaps single and participating in infidelity,.

Not a relationship that the primary partner knows about.

Okay. And then number four,.

I want to just name power here for a moment.

Sometimes a power imbalance is built into an affair.

A married boss is cheating with an employee.

An older andor wealthier person is cheating with someone who is younger and or less financially stable.

Power is sort of baked into the dynamic in a way.

That may lead us to ask questions about agency,.

About choice, about consent.

I believe that the person who holds more power, whether that is ascribed power or achieved power,.

That person holds more responsibility to make wise and fair and aligned choices.

That person needs to look at what they are seeking in their relationship with you.

What they perhaps envy about you and about your life, your.

Youth, your mobility,.

Whatever.

Who they get to act as if they are when they are with you.

And today I am not talking to that person.

I am talking to you.

And based on the power imbalance, you might actually not have any ability to extricate yourself from this affair without fear of.

Massive retribution. If that is the case, this is abusive and I want you to be working closely with a therapist on.

Safely and carefully planning your next moves.

However, short of a scenario like that,.

I want to remind you of what the novelist Alice Walker said, which is quote, "The most common way that people give.

Up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

So, I'm going to be in this episode really wanting you to find even if there is some kind of power imbalance.

Baked into your affair dynamic.

I'm going to be wanting you to look for the wedges of power, the places where you perhaps have given away power.

That you can and would benefit from reclaiming.

Over the years, I've been a therapist for or I've been a friend to somebody who is themselves single but involved in.

An affair.

And built into the role of being an affair partner is a measure.

Of what we call in the field of therapy.

Cognitive dissonance.

There's a measure of cognitive dissonance because as the affair partner,.

You need to have a way of making sense of or rationalizing.

Or making what you're doing.

Seem okay or feel okay.

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort.

That results from holding two conflicting beliefs,.

Two conflicting values,.

Two conflicting attitudes. It's like a friction inside of your brain.

It's a rub inside of your heart.

And we all have internal mechanisms that we use to attempt to resolve.

Cognitive dissonance to smooth over.

We all have little lies that we are at risk of telling ourselves.

To make something okay that is actually not okay.

So in this conversation,.

I'm asking you to get curious about how you are resolving or attempting to resolve the cognitive dissonance that's inherent in being.

The affair partner.

Sometimes.

The story is, well, I'm single, so it's okay.

Like, it's not on me. I'm not the one who's cheating on somebody.

Or another story that might make it seem okay is one that sounds like this.

I'm not responsible for their unhappy marriage.

If they're so unhappy that they would start a relationship with me, I can't possibly be responsible for that.

And I would argue that there's a way in which you are right.

You are not responsible.

For somebody else's marriage, somebody else's marriage that was unhappy long before you even showed up on the scene.

I validate that.

And I want you to get curious about what is going on inside of you that makes it okay for you to.

Participate in this. So today we have to start with that premise that there's at least some kind of cognitive dissonance that's.

Going on inside of you. And that's what I want to help you wrestle with.

It's really important here that you know that I am not saying that you are bad or evil or sick or wrong.

For being the affair partner. I'm actually not even making an ethical or a moral declaration.

I'm just saying that there is inevitably a kind of friction inside of you that I want you to turn toward.

I've always loved this poem by the Sufi poet whose name was Roomie.

And the poem is called a great wagon.

And these are a few of the lines of the poem.

He writes, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,.

There is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

That's us today in that field, in that grass.

We're way out beyond right doing and wrongdoing.

We are doing exploration.

In the service of your healing.

And by the way, this episode is for you whether you are currently an affair partner or if you were an affair.

Partner at some moment in your own past.

Cuz I think what so often happens is that people have this experience and it ends very quickly.

Either because one of you ends it or because you get caught and then the chapter goes subterranean.

It goes underground. You kind of like put it in a box and sort of bury it.

But there's a risk in burying a chapter that has some shame or some sadness or some confusion.

Layered within it because then you don't get to learn from it and that energy is still there even though you have.

Tried to push it away. So, you deserve this episode even if you aren't currently tangled up in an affair because you.

Deserve to understand yourself more deeply and to make sure that going forward you have everything you need internally and relationally.

To create relationships that are fully above board relationships.

With people who are fully ready to partner with you.

So, what I'm asking you to do in this episode is just slow down and sit alongside me.

Let's look together at the cognitive dissonance inside of you.

Let's look together at what you are doing to make this okay.

Let's look together at some of the things that may have set you up to be okay in this dynamic or maybe.

Even drawn to this dynamic.

Let's look at the price that you're paying for spending energy trying to make something okay.

And let's look, of course, at where to go from here.

Okay, this next part I'm calling the four whispers.

I want to talk through four messages.

That you are potentially.

Giving yourself.

About yourself.

When you are the affair partner.

And I'm calling these the four whispers because I suspect that I'm telling you stuff that you already know,.

But stuff that maybe perhaps you are ignoring.

Or overriding.

What you might be saying out loud is, "It's not a big deal," or, "I'm not doing anything wrong."

But I suspect that one or more of these whispers is right there under the surface, almost like beckoning for your attention.

So, whisper number one is,.

"I can focus on the narrow,.

Not the wide."

One of the things that you have to do to be an affair partner is keep your lens very tightly focused just.

On the two of you.

Because if you widen the lens and you look at all of what the other person is putting in jeopardy by being.

With you,.

That would create the conditions for guilt, for shame, for overwhelm.

And so when you tighten the lens,.

When you just focus it on right here, right now, just the two of you, that's actually a coping mechanism.

It's your attempt to protect yourself from those feelings of shame, of guilt, of overwhelm.

But that coping mechanism poses a risk.

Because it's cutting your own awareness short.

You're trimming the edges and shrinking down your own awareness.

You are subconsciously.

Taking in less information.

And we know.

Any relationship is complicated.

There's a lot going on in any given moment.

And so having that big, wide, expansive awareness.

Is essential.

It's essential in a relationship to be able to make space for all the competing truths that are going on.

That's a skill that you want and need to have.

It's a skill that's essential for any kind of healthy, vibrant relationship.

We need to be able to look holistically.

We need to be able to take in the full picture and all of the context.

So when you are an affair partner.

And when you as a way of coping with being an affair partner, when you narrow down your awareness.

And act like what you're participating in isn't problematic.

Because you are attempting to quiet.

Cognitive dissonance,.

That practice of narrowing your awareness.

Shrinks you. It cuts you off from access to your own inner knowing.

And that inner knowing,.

That wisdom is what can guide you to the next right thing.

Okay.

Whisper number two. I can reduce my own empathy.

In order to participate in an affair,.

You also have to emotionally protect yourself.

And to do so, you have to cut yourself off from any.

Empathic narrative.

About the betrayed partner.

I know it sounds strange to say, but when you're participating in an affair,.

You are not just in a relationship with the betraying.

Partner,.

You are also in a relationship of sorts with the betrayed partner,.

Even though that person doesn't know about you and even though you may not have ever even met that person.

So, check in with yourself.

What is the story that you tell yourself.

About the betrayed partner.

In an attempt for you to resolve your cognitive dissonance?

Is your story that the betrayed partner is checked out?

Is your story that the betrayed partner is neglectful?

Is your story that the betrayed partner is mean?

That they're a sucker?

I want you just to kind of investigate the story that you have about this person, this person that you may not.

Have ever even met.

I suspect that you have some method by which you shrink down.

The betrayed partner's.

Full humanity.

And you do that in order to attempt to make sense of this dynamic that you've gotten yourself into.

So.

Here I'm just inviting you to notice the story that you've made up about them.

To make this okay.

And the ways in which in doing that.

You are once again shrinking down your own capacity here you're shrinking down your own big wide organic.

Capacity.

For empathy.

Because I suspect that if you were to really let yourself stand in the betrayed partner shoes,.

You would feel a measure of compassion.

You would feel that sense of shared humanity.

And again, I am not saying this to make you feel guilty or to make you feel ashamed,.

But again, I just am inviting your awareness to the parts of yourself.

That you've had to cut yourself off from in order to take on this role.

And I'm inviting you to get in touch with the price that you are paying for reducing your empathy.

Okay. Whisper number three. I can participate in duplicity.

So the third thing that you may be telling yourself is that it's okay for you to participate in something that is.

Duplicitous.

My belief is that it is all of our birthright to stand in our own integrity.

In getting ready for this episode, I Googled the definition of integrity.

And the first definition is quote the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

End quote.

Which we would have kind of expected that definition, right?

A definition that focuses on morality.

But the second definition I found fascinating.

The second definition is quote the state of being whole and undivided.

In the example was about territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

But I of course.

Took this second definition to a more psychological.

Place.

Participation.

In infidelity.

Compromises.

Your experience of your own.

Wholeness.

You are divided.

You are participating in something that is cut off, that is disintegrated.

Lies and deceit take us out of our own internal alignment.

And you deserve to not move through the world with secrets.

You deserve to not experience yourself.

Lying.

To not witness the person that you're with lying to their primary partner over and over.

Being near someone who is lying.

Is also you compromising you. I'm not in this moment judging the way in which the betraying partner is lying, but instead.

I'm focusing on what it's like for you to put yourself in a space where you are collaborating with and you are.

Witnessing.

Deceit.

Because in doing so,.

You are telling yourself that your own integrity.

Doesn't matter very much.

And I would challenge you and invite you to just start to look at how that pattern then perhaps.

Begins to creep into other parts of your life.

Maybe it's at work with friends or with family members.

I think that what we tolerate.

Or participate in within one part of our world,.

It tends not to stay there.

It tends to leak out and sort of seep into other parts of our worlds.

So, we're going to talk later about how family of origin wounds may have primed you to be at risk of becoming.

The affair partner,.

But for now, just pause and check in with yourself.

When you were growing up, did you perhaps watch the grown-ups in your home living with secrets?

Did you watch them live a double life or live outside of their own integrity?

If so, it makes sense then, right, that you are drawn to someone who's doing the same.

That absence of wholeness.

Is what feels familiar. It's what maybe even feels like love.

It paradoxically.

Feels safe.

And we now have the power as adults to identify what we want to have be different in our lives today.

You get to today as an adult create safety inside of yourself.

So that you feel aligned with wholeness,.

Not fracture.

Okay. Bottom line is that you are entitled to look at yourself in the mirror and feel like you understand.

The person you see looking back at you.

Whisper number four is.

I deserve only crumbs, only slivers, only low accountability.

This one kind of follows from the last one.

Being the affair partner is you telling yourself something.

About your own worth.

That you are not worthy of a relationship that exists in the sunlight.

That all you're worthy of is a relationship that exists in the shadows.

And again, not making a moral judgment.

It's not even I'm not even talking here about the marriage that this affair puts in danger.

It's about you and what you're telling yourself.

About your own worthiness.

We're going to dive into this more in a moment, but my hunch would be that you are quote unquote agreeing to.

Be the affair partner because you've had other experiences in your life that have left you with the message that you are.

Not worthy of something that is whole.

And there's a way in which the arrow goes in both directions here.

You got the message early on that led you to feel as if you are not worthy of a full above board.

In the sunlight relationship.

And that then sets you up for or creates a vulnerability within you to fall into or to participate in an affair.

Okay. But the arrow goes the other way too.

By participating in an affair, by being an affair partner,.

That.

Process, that experience.

Reinforces.

That narrative. reinforces.

Inside of you.

This belief that all you deserve are scraps.

So there's a vulnerability.

And then there's an experience that reinforces.

That vulnerability.

Okay?

Just bringing your ever so compassionate awareness to that reality that there may be something from your past that you are at.

Risk of perpetuating.

But then also by participating in this affair now you are reinforcing.

That belief and that experience once again.

All right. So we've looked at the four messages, the four whispers that being an affair partner creates and reinforces.

That was number one. I can focus on the narrow and not the wide.

Number two, I can reduce my own empathy.

Number three, I can participate in duplicity.

And number four, I deserve only a sliver or a crumb or a low accountability.

Situation.

So now I want to talk about the energy, the draw, the pull.

I want to invite you to look at what drew you toward this kind of relationship in the first place.

What brought you to this moment?

What perhaps.

Works or fits for you about this.

And I'll say that over the years when I work with clients or I've known people who are the affair partner,.

This role tends to feel somewhat.

Befuddling or confusing to them. It's like, how did I get here?

They somewhat feel like a stranger to themselves.

That's why in this part of the conversation, I want to offer you some avenues that are designed to help you.

Make more sense to you.

Insight.

Can help us create behavior change.

So, I've identified three different ways in which this role of the affair partner might perhaps be compelling for you.

And as you listen, I want you to see which parts from any or all of these land for you.

By way of preview,.

These three are number one, goodness of fit.

Number two, object of desire, self-consciousness,.

And number three, redo of a childhood wound.

We're taking sort of a top-down.

Approach here, starting with like the least psychologically deep, moving towards the most psychologically deep.

Number one, goodness of fit.

With any relationship.

That we're in,.

There's always an element of timing.

Like always this question of what am I available for at this moment in my life?

And so here.

I want to invite you to look at the moment in your life when you fell into or stepped into being the.

Affair partner. What was going on in your life at that moment?

What was the bigger context for you?

Why now?

Why then? Why that moment?

One thing to note here, by the way, is that infidelity is not about one choice.

It's a series of choices. It's a series of boundary crossings that tend to kind of move the ball down the field.

So, as you're reflecting on the timing when in the story of your life, this participation, this being the affair partner happened.

For you,.

Start at the beginning of the affair, certainly,.

But make sure that you start by thinking about those initial early kind of micro boundary crossings that may have led you.

Into something that was more of a full-blown affair wherever you are now.

It may have been that you were coming out of a relationship where there was infidelity or betrayal, where you were cheated.

On. And it may be that there's a piece of you that is drawn to now playing out the other part.

Good old Freud called this repetition.

Compulsion where we are drawn to try to master today.

That which has been overwhelming or harmful in the past.

You have been the betrayed partner and you are now pulled to try out or attempt to master the affair partner role.

A role that likely felt really confounding.

And strangely powerful to you when you were in the spot of the person who is being betrayed.

So the timing might just be that you are trying to master something.

That has been overwhelming.

And confusing and tremendously upsetting for you.

It might be that you are in a moment in your life where you are particularly.

Interested in romantic or erratic connection.

And I can tell you that there are very few energies on this earth that are as powerful as the energy of.

Infidelity.

Because it is the energy of attraction.

Supercharged.

With the energy of transgression.

Jack Morren, who is a sex therapist and a psychologist,.

Came up with this thing that he calls the erotic equation.

And the equation is attraction.

Plus obstacle.

Equals excitement. And there is no bigger obstacle than risk and secrecy.

So the check-in here for you is what is going on with me that is leading me to seek not just erotic.

Connection, but erotic connection that is paired with danger.

So that's the check-in there about the context or the timing.

Why this moment in your life?

Why are you needing that supercharged.

Erotic connection?

And finally,.

It may be that you are at a moment in your life where you are really curious about and available for something.

That is charged and electric and erotic, but you are not interested in or available for commitment and all that comes with.

Commitment like responsibility.

And domesticity.

Which seem to have decidedly.

Non-erotic.

Charges attached to them.

So in this way, by participating in an affair,.

You get the quote unquote goodies.

Of this little slice of a person.

Without dealing with full responsibility.

To that person. You don't have to change your life.

You don't have to have them change their life.

You're not becoming interdependent.

You're not building a future together.

You are just existing inside of this little sliver of erotic connection and passion in a way that somehow.

Works for you at this time.

So looking at goodness of fit is not.

Justification.

It is not rationalization.

It is us attempting to connect some dots.

In order to help your behavior make more sense to you.

So that you can step into your own alignment once again so that you can honor the need.

You may be attempting to fill.

By another method. Right? finding another route to honoring the need.

Then our needs, our curiosities,.

Our longings, our yearnings,.

Those are never wrong in and of themselves.

We just have more adaptive and less adaptive ways of attempting to meet our heart's yearning and our heart's longing.

Okay, moving on to number two,.

Object of desire, self-consciousness.

So, this.

Is a construct that was developed by two psychologists.

Dr. Anthony Bogurt and Dr. Lorie Brad.

And I have linked for you their very wonderful 2014 paper from the journal of sex and marital therapy in the show.

Notes if you want to nerd out a little bit more deeply on this concept.

So object of desire self-consciousness.

Is a somewhat gendered.

Construct.

And.

Certainly an affair partner can be any gender and any gender expression and any sexual orientation.

But there can be a particular way that this whole thing plays out.

If you, the affair partner, are a cisgender.

Heterosexual.

Woman.

And the betraying partner.

Is a cisgender.

Heterosexual.

Man.

And that's because of what the research tells us about how object of desire self-consciousness.

Plays out.

This research has shown that many people, especially.

Cisgender.

Heterosexual women, are turned on.

By being wanted,.

By being desired.

That's object of desire self-consciousness.

The turn on here is you want me so badly.

You want me so badly that you would transgress for me.

It's not so much about me being turned on because I want you.

As much as it's me.

Seeing you.

Wanting me is what's turning me on.

Being the object of your desire turns me on.

And that zone, that erotic zone of I'm turned on because I see you wanting me.

That is something that research has found is.

Particularly.

Something that is titillating to the straight ladies.

It's a little bit like narcissistic.

With a lowercase N.

There's certainly some ego engagement here.

And I think that if that is something that is part of your erotic template,.

You are turned on by somebody wanting you,.

Then being the affair partner.

Is that dialed up to 100.

Because it's not just that this person wants you.

It's that this person wants you so badly that they are willing to put everything at risk.

Their family, their marriage, their livelihood, their reputation.

In this way, for someone with object of desire self-consciousness,.

The role of a fair partner is an enormous.

Libido spiker.

And certainly object of desire self-consciousness.

Can play out no matter your gender and your gender expression.

So here I'm inviting you to curiously.

Ask yourself the following questions.

What is it like to be wanted so badly that somebody would take such a huge risk in this way for me?

What does that do to my sexual desire?

And then of course the question,.

What might be a more aligned way for me to play with the energy.

Of object of desire self-consciousness?

What might be a way that involves less risk and that involves less harm?

Okay,.

If this lands for you, if any part of this lands for you, I would encourage you to turn to my second.

Book, which is called Taking Sexy Back.

Uh and that that can be a resource for you to learn more about your sexual self to expand your sexual self-awareness.

Okay. Number three,.

Redo of a childhood wound.

You know, the affair partner enters a story.

They enter a story of a marriage that started long before the affair partner arrived on the scene.

And the affair partner only knows the story of the marriage as told by the betraying partner.

And the betraying partner must tell the story of the marriage in a way that helps them resolve their own cognitive dissonance,.

In a way that attempts to make the cheating okay.

Or maybe.

The betraying partner doesn't even tell you a story.

Maybe they're acting as if what's happening, as if this affair isn't really happening, which then.

Can end up feeling crazymaking to you, the affair partner,.

Because you know what's happening is elicit,.

But you don't know what the experience of cheating is feeling like for the betraying partner.

In that way, you, the affair partner, are sort of like asked to be okay.

With large gaps in your own meaning making ability.

Your ability to make meaning of this affair is limited because you either don't have a story from the betraying partner or.

The story that the betraying partner is telling you is, you know, is skewed.

As a way of helping them attempt to resolve their own cognitive dissonance, their own guilt, their own shame.

But be clear, you, the affair partner, are playing a part in this couple's relationship.

You are serving a function of sorts in this relationship.

As my friend and therapy goddess Aarel.

Says, quote,.

"When we seek another in an affair,.

It isn't always our partner that we're turning away from, but the person that we've become,.

We are not looking for another person as much as another version of ourself."

End quote.

The betraying partner is seeking something.

In your gaze.

They are attempting in their relationship with you.

To reclaim something that they have lost, to feel something that they cannot feel in their marriage or in their relationship.

And even if you do not understand.