Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 4: Why Do Happy People Cheat?

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

There's no easy way to talk about infidelity. It's a painful, difficult topic that evokes a strong emotional reaction. But it's also one that so many people face that I wanted to bring you one of the wisest voices out there on this topic: relationship expert, psychotherapist, and bestselling author Esther Perel! (@estherperelofficial)   Listen as we talk about why even happy people can be driven to cheat, what to do about it, and whether there is ever a path to recovering a relationship after infidelity.      Email your thoughts at [e-mail]! 

Hello, hello, it's Stephen Hussey here, and I'm going to keep the preamble short today because I want to dive right into this thoughtful, content-rich, powerful conversation between my brother Matthew Hussey and none other than Esther Perel, a fantastic writer, one of the leading psychotherapists and thinkers on relationships, love, and dating in the modern era. It's a fantastic conversation and I'm going to hand over right now to Matthew himself. If we are incredibly fortunate in life, there will be moments or a moment where we get to sit down and have a genuine conversation with our intellectual crush. The woman that I am about to introduce you to is that for me. Her name is Esther Perel.

She wrote Mating in Captivity and most recently, The State of Affairs. She has one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time on relationships. The hour that I sat and talked with Esther was one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had on relationships. In the section of this talk that I'm going to present to you today, we talk about infidelity, which I know is a highly charged issue for so many people. But what we're about to talk about, I believe, is essential viewing for anyone who wants to apply a more rational, kind, and humanistic approach to one of the most taboo subjects in relationships. Without further ado, I present to you the wonderful Esther Perel.

We have this narrative, so many of us, that happy people don't cheat. And you challenge that. Yes. so many of us that happy people don't cheat and you challenge that yes and you say not necessarily true and I thought to myself if that's the case is that how did you that idea come across to you for myself I didn't have a largely emotional response but here's what I imagined some of my audience may be feeling if that's true how can I ever relax if even happy people in a relationship can cheat where now is my barometer for whether or not I'm likely to be cheated on I think that when uh when you enter a relationship, it is part of your awareness that such a thing could happen.

You don't live with it. You hope it will not be, but it's not like it's far-fetched. It's that we have to be alert, but alert in our awareness of that uh so the same way we're living i live in la and we pack a bag for an earthquake should it ever happen yeah but we don't sit here every day freaking out about a potential earthquake i mean it's a strange thing to say it's like it's a terrible thing you you imagine it won't happen. Our contract isn't based on this. You hope that the relationship is solid enough.

You hope you can meet your partner's needs enough. But to live with the naivete that this is never going to happen, no, you actually say this could happen, and I'm going to do everything I can to to to for that not to be the case but I'm not going to live with the naivete that this is inconceivable but that doesn't explain why even happy people cheat and I don't want to say it's happy people cheat I want to say it's people who are in happy relationships people come to me all the time and they say, I love my partner very much. I'm having an affair. Well, I thought one of the really empowering things you said in a way was,

if I, we live in a society now where we're shamed for staying in an unhappy relationship, not shamed for leaving. Yes. And that if we're cheating instead of just leaving, that means there are parts of the relationship that are good enough that we want to salvage or that we don't want to suddenly just... But not even good enough, not even just about enough. Listen, some people cheat because they want out. Some people cheat because they are grandiose and entitled. And some people cheat in order

to preserve their relationships. As weird as thought as that may actually be. Because they know it will alleviate some desire they have or because they're self-sabotaging so that their partner will find out so they can have a more honest dialogue both right both or because they have tried to say something for a long time right that was not being responded to right it's you know we want to say why didn't you bring it up why if you're unhappy enough to cheat you're unhappy enough to go i know seriously it's much harder to stay than to leave and to rebuild and to see and to take a crisis like any other major crisis and to say we will get through this. Because a relationship is more than just what happens between the two of us. There's a whole system that depends on this relationship.

It's a whole life. When you leave a relationship that's of years, you leave a life. And I don't always want to live that whole life. You said that you have to, with your partner, decide what the legacy of your affair will be. Yeah. Or their affair. Yes.

For a woman who has been cheated on, how does she overcome the anger and the resentment that I have to grow and do something in response to something you fucked up. Why is it half my job to create the legacy for what this will all mean? And now I understand that is a very evolved point of view. If you've decided the relationship is important enough to stick in, then ultimately that's the way it is. But how do you overcome that anger from being put in the position where you're forced to grow?

First of all, you do not have to overcome all the anger. I think that you are perfectly okay when this comes up even two years later to still be utterly fuming. And then I say to him, you see this woman? This woman who is saying to you, how dare you do this?

You took something that was ours and you brought that to this other person. This was for us. What the f*** were you doing? And I said to him, you wanted a woman who fights for you? You got her. This is a woman. This is no longer just a mother who is taking care of her children. You wanted a woman? Here you have her. Now you need to be able to handle this. You know, it is

not about being Pollyannish about it. She should, if she's, you know, there are certain things that you won't forgive. But that doesn't things that you won't forgive but that doesn't mean that you don't just say when it comes to this i don't forgive him but in the rest of our life the guy has still been really amazing and he showed up when my mother was sick and he showed up with my alcoholic brother and he showed up when i had when i got my my whatever issues that i was doing you know and the thing that really shows you the ones who can do this versus the ones on occasion you have to say the end is the end, you know, this is, is when I'm actually able to say

you messed up here, but you actually still are a decent human being in other areas. And I am not, I'm not erasing the whole thing. I don't think that because you did this, you have destroyed everything we ever had. This truth does not stand to annihilate all of what we have built. And you don't judge an entire relationship

by the affair. That is unfair to the marriage, unfair to the relationship, whatever it is, you know, if it's married or not, it really puts this thing as if it stands to tell a bigger story than everything that preceded. You know, you've got people, they buried their parents together, they raised children, they have a handicapped child,

they've gone through economic downturns, they've done so much, and this thing is going to become the ultimate truth of their relationship. I don't think it's fair to the relationship and I don't think it's fair to the enormous investment that people have put in. That doesn't mean it's right. The last thing I will ever do is condone this, make this be the right thing to do. But you get through it. You do get through it. Now, in occasion, she will remind him, and she will tell him, you know,

I will never, never forget this. Don't worry. And I like when she has that fire. Yeah, yeah. Because, in a way, she's fighting for him. And if he can't handle her wrath, too bad. You wanted attention. You wanted to see if she cares.

You got it. Now you have to deal with it. Stand up. I really hope that you enjoyed that conversation on both an intellectual and a personal level. Esther's is a voice that needs to be heard. She is a clear-headed thinker who applies an incredibly kind and rational approach

to the human condition. And these aren't easy issues to talk about. I think it takes a brave voice to confront these kinds of taboos in life, like infidelity. She does it with such kindness and such nuance and I'd love for you to hear her approach. Thank you for watching. Pick up a copy of the book and thank you to Esther for being part of this with me. I really appreciate you and as always I look forward

to seeing you all next week. I love that through this conversation and Esther's work, we can see that there isn't always a one-size-fits-all solution to a problem as complicated and big as cheating. And yes, some couples decide that their relationship and trust is irreparable and decide to part ways at that point. But there's also couples that Esther's worked with who have rebuilt after that experience and turned their relationship into something beautiful, into something more honest, and have managed to come out of that experience as a stronger partnership for it. And I think that's an inspiring message to know that there's many different solutions

to the same problem. So if you enjoyed that episode and you actually want to hear more of Matt and Esther talking, that clip is actually taken from an hour-long conversation in our Attraction to Commitment program. And we don't usually do favorites in our company, but Matt has been on record about saying this is the most comprehensive and the program he's the most proud of that we've ever made because it literally goes from the early stages of attraction right to what conversations you need to get into commitment and the principles and behaviors that keep lasting love and you can get that at getlastinglove.com

if you go there you can sign up to our members area and hear the full hour-long conversation with Matt and Esther. And if you are going through the pain of heartbreak and infidelity right now, just know that you are not alone. So many people we have worked with have been in that dark place and they feel that they're completely isolated and it can feel like no one understands your pain. Just know that you can dig through this right now and find your way back to the light again. But what you don't want to do is beat yourself up, live in regret, start chastising yourself for past mistakes and wondering, maybe if I did things differently, it would have turned out another way. These are all forms of self-torture. And the best thing you

can do for yourself going forward is to start being loving to yourself, start being an ally, lift yourself up, do things that are good for your self-esteem, look at people who support you and lift you up right now, and you can start on the way to defining the next chapter of your life, turning the page, and you can see this experience,

this pain, as just a moment just a chapter a footnote in your romantic history and it can become the story of how you flipped it all around and you can look back and go my god i can't believe the place i was in then look at how far i've come now the first step is up to you to take the pen, get a fresh new page and decide what the story is going to be going forward. Make it something that empowers you, something that's beautiful, something you can be proud of. And we will see you soon. © transcript Emily Beynon