The Liz Moody Podcast - 50% of People Cheat: The Real Reasons Why + What To Do Next

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Have you been cheated on? Have you cheated? Want to know how to prevent infidelity in your relationship? I have on expert, Dr. Tammy Nelson, a board-certified sex and couples therapist and the author of six relationship books, to answer it all. We offer super juicy, shocking, and valuable insights + actionable advice to help anyone navigating healing and the turbulent waters of infidelity. From exploring the four key resources in a relationship and modern monogamy, to practical strategies for maintaining an erotic connection, you’ll walk away with tools to harness and maintain a trusting romantic partnership. In this episode, we get into: Common myths about cheating Why people cheat The reasons people have affairs The  four resources in a relationship How to rebuild trust after infidelity How to rebuild intimacy & sex How to prevent cheating How to decide if you stay or leave the relationship Trust & intuition  Forgiveness & moving forward For more from Dr. Tammy Nelson, find her on Instagram @doctor_tammynelson, online at drtammynelson.com to message her or review her books, and check out her podcast The Trouble with Sex. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsor:  Seed: go to seed.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 351. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The assumption is that men cheat more than women, which statistically isn't true. Women and cheat as much as men. Cheating is based on lying and dishonesty. Now, with technology, you can cheat on your partner lying in bed next to them. I have so many friends who really struggle with the decision whether to stay or to go if they've been cheated on. What factors should they be considering? It's not so much that we look for someone else. It's that we look.

How important is regular sex to preventing cheating in a relationship? forgiveness is never the goal of healing after an affair. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Lids Moody Podcast. Today we're talking about a topic that is shrouded in a lot of secrecy, a lot of shame, cheating. Whether this is something that you've dealt with or something that you want to do everything in your power to avoid in your relationship, this episode has fascinating insights into the hidden reasons why people cheat, how to strengthen your relationship to prevent cheating as much as you possibly can. because obviously a lot of that is out of our control,

but we're going to tell you what parts you do have agency in, and we're going to get into what you can do next, whether you have cheated or you have been cheated on. Our guest today is Dr. Tammy Nelson, a board-certified sex and couples therapist and the author of six books, including open monogamy, co-creating your ideal relationship agreement. She is the host of the Trouble with Sex podcast

and a regular consultant for organizations like Harvard, medical school and trauma-informed media. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Rolling Stone, and many other top media outlets. Before we get into things, I just want to say really quickly. I created this episode for a friend who was dealing with being cheated on. It is so incredibly hard. And if this episode found you because you are in a similar situation, I just want you to know that I'm sending you an extra big hug. I'm sending you so much love, and I really, really hope that this conversation helps. Dr. Tammy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you here.

Cheating. It's just such an interesting topic. Everybody thinks it's not going to impact them, but then research shows that what do we have? We have 60% of men and 45% of women cheat. And since it's self-reported, those numbers might be actually far higher than that since people aren't likely to say, like, oh, yeah, I cheated. why do you think there's such a discrepancy between how frequently cheating is occurring and how infrequently we think it's occurring? I think it's hard to get numbers for infidelity in any kind of research because cheating is based

on lying and dishonesty. So people lie to the researchers, number one. Number two, we don't really know what cheating is anymore. Like it used to be so easy and clear cut. Now with technology, you can cheat on your. partner lying in bed next to them. You know, how do you define cheating, really? We don't say, I promise to love, honor you, and never send my picture to anyone on Instagram. And we don't say that putting a little heart next to someone's bathing suit picture is cheating. Like, we really have to

be much more explicit about what cheating means. So those numbers are sort of irrelevant because cheating really means that you and I disagree about our monogamy agreement, whatever that looks like. So you might think that masturbating is cheating. I might think, you know, that's private. That's nothing to do with you. A lot of people disagree about like what pornography really means. And so those baseline implicit assumptions are where we can kind of get confused about what the numbers look like. Like, are we really cheating?

And what does cheating really mean these days? And what does it look like to you? It might mean that I'm not really cheating, but you think I am. Do you think cheating is going up because it's so much easier to cheat these days? Oh, there's definitely more access. I mean, I could be cheating right now. You wouldn't know it. Like, sort of ubiquitous in our technology, in our culture.

And you can find people to cheat with all the time or to talk sexy to. Or, you know, it used to be kind of hard. You had to, like, invite the postman in. Now the postman is everywhere. Okay. So we're going to get into what to do. do if you've been cheated on and kind of how to navigate that. But first, I want to start with how we can potentially skew the odds so that we're not cheated on or cheating in the first place.

So what are the most common reasons for infidelity? It's not so much that we look for someone else. It's that we look to be someone else. So part of it is what is the part of you that you feel like you can't be in this relationship? Like the more shame or guilt you have about something that you're into or a part of you that you can express, the more likely you are to compartmentalize it, like split it off, disintegrate it, hide it. The likelihood of cheating is equal to the amount of sort of guilt and shame you have about who you are or what you're into. So the more honest and vulnerable you can be with someone, the more transparent you are, the more you can integrate all the parts of yourself and say, look, this is who I am. And you can accept me or not accept me,

but at least I'm showing you that this is my whole integrated self. And there's really nothing that I need to hide from you. Now, whether your partner accepts that or not is a different story. But if you don't want to have to have an affair, I think you need to check it out with the person you're with first and see how they feel about it. It's so hard because immediately I'm like, oh, we can ask our partner if there's anything they're feeling guilt and shame about. we can encourage ourselves to share that. But if we're feeling guilt and shame about something, that can be really hard even to admit it to yourself,

much less to take that scary step and admit that to your partner. You have to grapple with the self-love there first, don't you? Oh, totally. But I wouldn't lead with guilt and shame. So, like, what are you feeling guilt and shame about tonight? That's not really a sexy conversation. But I would lead with, like,

what are some of the fantasies that you have that maybe we haven't shared, or what do you like that we've done that you would like more of? Or what's one thing we've done that you thought was hot that maybe you want to try again? Because that gives you a hint to what people are into, but maybe they haven't shared. I don't know if it's good to start with like, what's a fantasy that you've never told anyone in your entire life and it's secret? Because there's usually a reason that people keep that secret because of guilt and shame. Do you think that it's always sexually grounded? because I'm thinking of something that people might not be getting in a relationship like validation or affection,

whether it's physical or other types of affection, intimacy, things like that. You know, I think that there's four resources in a relationship. There's time, attention, affection, and sex. So usually if someone is jealous or if somebody is going outside of the relationship, it's for one of those things. And so even like if you had an a few and I are in a relationship, you had an affectionate, you had an affair and we go to therapy and you say, you know, I'm really upset and I'm jealous and I can't believe she did that. I would ask you as the therapist, well, which is the part that bothered you? Is it that Tammy spent time with that person and like you and I don't have any

time together to be on the couch and just watch TV? Is it that she was actually like texting like during dinner under the table and paying attention? Like you and I don't pay attention to each other? Is it the affection? Like we don't touch each other anymore? You don't. kiss me when you come home, or is it the actual sex? Like, you're imagining that there was sex there that you don't do anymore? Like, because most of the time, it's not really the sex. Sometimes it's the dishonesty about all that stuff, the hidden parts. But, you know, if you get kind of granular about it, like, what is it that you really want more of from your partner or that you feel like you're not getting enough of but somebody else might give that to you? That's like

the high risk, I think. of having an affair. If somebody pays you attention and they're really curious about you, like, tell me more about you and tell me where you went to school and tell me what you like in bed. I mean, we'd pay a therapist to pay attention to us. Like, that's really valuable and makes us feel really good about ourselves. I saw a TikTok where it was like, comment your job and then comment a piece of secret information that you have because of your job. And the entire comment section was filled with people who's like, I'm a bartender, I'm a hotel worker, I work the front desk to lobby or something, and if your partner travels for business, they are cheating on you.

Like it was like, if you are spending these big swaths of time away from your partner, they are probably cheating. It was the secret knowledge these people ostensibly had. Do you believe in that at all? Do you think that that access or being away from your partner increases likelihood to cheat? Well, I mean, it certainly makes it convenient, but it's not definitive. That's a pretty big generalization. It was a TikTok.

We're not saying this is scientific evidence. But I did think it was interesting how many comments of that ilk there were. Well, I wonder if the people that were commenting are the ones that the person's cheating with because, I mean, I travel for work. I don't cheat. Like, I think there's a distinct difference in, first of all, in industries, like who cheats. And also, I mean, certainly access is different when you're traveling. but what a weird generalization. And my guess is that it's probably gender coded too,

like the assumption is that men cheat more than women, which statistically isn't true. Women cheat as much as men. Wait, so I said at the beginning 60% of men and 45% of women cheat, but you're saying that women cheat as much as men. Yeah, they just are much better at hiding it. Okay, so even that because those are self-reported numbers, they're not accurately reflecting the women.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, and those numbers are based on, at some point in their marriage. So we don't know if, like, people who are living together or dating, what those statistics are really like. And, again, we don't know how they define cheating. But we do know that women just historically are so much better at hiding it. Because think of what has happened to women over the centuries for cheating on their partners

and still happens in a lot of different countries. Like, there's so much harsher punishments for women. So we are just much sneakier, actually. We're much better at it. Are there typically different reasons that a man would cheat versus a woman would cheat? I can tell you from my research. So Ashley Madison, which is a married but dating website, has 80 million members worldwide. They gave me permission to access those members when I was writing one of my books.

I wrote six books. One of them is when you're the one who cheats. And so they gave me two profiles. one is a man and one is a woman. I didn't interact with anyone, but I put my profiles up and said I was a man seeking a woman and a woman seeking a man. I also said I was a gay woman and like no one wrote to me. That's not the platform. So I'm just telling your listeners. But the interesting thing about that is that when I was a woman, the men that wrote to me all said they wanted a relationship. They weren't going to leave their wives. They were not interested in casualty. sex, though. They didn't want to just have a one-time thing. They wanted someone they could text all the time. They wanted a repeat relationship, like a parallel marriage. Like they wanted a girlfriend. And I mean, every single one of them. And when the women wrote to me and I was a man, the women sent me like bathing suit pictures and boob shots. And they all said, look, I don't want to hear your problems. You have a wife for that.

don't tell me about your bad marriage. I just want to have sex after I put the kids on the bus. I don't need to see you again. And it should be hot, kinky, and sometimes S&M sex. And all the women were like, I don't want a relationship. I have enough emotional labor at home. I'm not interested in that. Now, that might be a select population that was a little bit older and maybe had young kids. It seemed to fall in that spectrum. But I'm sorry. This is a select population. This is a little bit older. I'm Sorry, this whole gender coding thing that men want to have an affair to have sex and women want an emotional relationship. It's not true. And I'm not the only one that found those results. Like, other people have studied that as well. Like the research shows women want hot sex. And if men cheat,

they actually want someone to like talk to. And actually sex workers have said the same thing. A lot of sex workers say that men that hire them just want to talk. And it's not just to have sex, that they really want to stay up and bond with the woman. And a lot of them project that the woman is like in falling in love with them. And they like have this whole emotional connection to people. And that's what they want. So why aren't these men talking to their partners? That's the ultimate question. I don't know if it's that they're not talking to them. I have a couple theories, but I don't know if they're true. So I'll just throw them out because I'm not really sure. One is I think men are not really taught to have that emotional language to talk

vulnerably about their feelings. So by the time they get to like middle age, they're sort of tired of that. They're like, okay, I've been working hard. I've been sort of the human doing, trying to do all the right things. And now I want to like feel my feelings. And they're searching for ways to do that. I think the other reason is that their wives, if they're married or in a long-term relationship, especially if they have kids, their wives are like exhausted.

And they're like, I don't really want to hear it. Like, I have to take care of the kids. I have to take care of the house. I have to take care of my job. We have to take care of sex. Like, I don't really care how you feel. So I'm kind of done with taking care of you in that emotional way. The other thing is I don't think men have as many support systems as women do.

Like women tend to like have women friends and they listen to podcasts. They go on TikTok. Like they tend to create more support. systems for themselves, so they have more outlets. I think men are doing it more often than they ever used to. There's more men support weekends and, you know, those retreats where men push rocks up mountains and I don't know what they do, drum naked in the woods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a new thing. That's relatively recent. So that all rings true to me. If we wanted to protect against that in our relationship, but I also don't want to add more mental load to the

women listening. What can we do about that? Start soon in your relationship, sharing, vulnerably, talking about your feelings, share the housework load because a lot of the resentment and the exhaustion that I see in my office when people come in to see me, the couples that come in to see me that have like low desire because they're so tired, it's because there's an imbalance in the workload responsibilities. You know, women, we've been, and again, It's sort of gender coding and heteronormative, but we've been taught that, you know, we can do it all. We can have a job. We can have the house.

We can have the kids. We can have the relationship. And that's all true. But the reality is it is exhausting. It is absolutely exhausting. So whether you're gay or straight, like having a more balanced workload of who does what so that one person doesn't feel burnt out. Like having a family, a house, a dog is exhausting. It's a lot of responsibility.

And it's hard to climb over the resentment in the middle of the bed if you're feeling like, I've done everything. And you, what? You took out the garbage? Like, big deal. You want to hear the list of things that I did? You know, like I see that a lot, that imbalance. Okay.

So on the other side, what is going on with all of these women who want hot sex? I feel like that's very counter to the portrayal of women that I often hear about or even hear about my own DMs, people who are. tired who don't know why their libido is so low, and yet they're out there soliciting like hot, kinky sex. So can you reconcile those two ideas for me? Yeah, I think they're both true. I think when we're tired, we don't have time for sex and we don't want to have sex at the end of the day. And it is exhausting to try to crank up the desire for sex. Also, there's a difference between desire and arousal. So desire is like, oh, yeah, I really want to have sex. And

and it's on my mind and I can't wait. Arousal is in my body I can have sex. And once I'm like sort of turned on, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm into this. This is great. But it could take a while to raise those levels of arousal to get up there. It's not just like, bam, let's do it. And when you're at the end of the day and kind of exhausted, you know, it's like, oh, I don't feel like getting to all those levels.

At the same time, when you do have energy like during the day, when no one's home, sometimes the desire and arousal can kick in, particularly for someone outside your relationship, because a couple reasons. One, we long for someone in the space in between us. So you're attracted to someone over there. You know, when they're sitting next to you on the couch every night, there's no space for longing. It feels familiar and it feels nice to be attached and comfy and cozy and eat pizza together

and watch Netflix, it's not like, it's not that longing where eroticism happens. So the more familiar you are with your partner, the longer you're together, the safer you are, the more it feels like family. And you don't want to have sex with your family, right? So the more you feel like family, the less turned on and aroused and desirous you're going to feel. It doesn't mean you don't love them. Doesn't mean you don't want them. Doesn't mean you don't feel good once you are having sex. But crossing that boundary is harder, actually, the longer you're together. You would think the longer you're together, the more safe you are, and so the better the sex would be. It's actually harder because eroticism by its nature is illicit, it's forbidden, it's naughty.

If I feel really safe with you and really attached, really like family, that's going to kind of kill that libido feeling. But an affair guy over there or an affair woman or somebody on the internet, I don't have them, I don't know them. So the attraction has a space there to sort of trigger that feeling of like, oh, yeah, maybe I am still alive. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't bring back the erotic into your marriage or else I wouldn't have a career. Like, it absolutely can happen. But there is a crossover part where you have to acknowledge that the other person has, maybe fantasies that are separate than you. Like they have a separate, erotic self, sort of going back to what we were saying before.

There may be things you're thinking about that are not about me. Okay, I have a lot of questions about that. But first I want to ask, does that mean there's like a lot of arguments in my friend group about whether you should like go to the bathroom in front of your partner or whether that's spoiling the romance. So do you think that those things are kind of spoiling the romance and making you feel like, quote unquote, family? Look, once you have a baby in front of someone, there's no mystery.

You know, so if you have kids or if you throw up in front of each other, if you hold someone's hair back when they're getting sick, like after a while, there is a certain amount of a decrease in the mystery, so to speak, and you kind of want that. Like there's a craving for attachment where the intimacy means like into me see. Like you're going to know everything about me and I want to know everything about you. I want to know all those secrets inside. of you and all those places that are hidden from me because then I'll feel like we're really attached to each other and really safe. But then after a while, I have no more curiosity about you. Like, oh, I know everything. She's totally not into that. And he would never do this.

And she doesn't like that kind of sex. And he would not eat that kind of food. And so the curiosity gets shut off and we roll our eyes and say, oh, I know everything about my partner. And it's nice, but it gets kind of boring. And then a new person comes along and we're like, oh, I'm kind of curious about them. And they're kind of curious about me. And now it feels fresh. I don't think it's about leaving the mystery.

I think it's about keeping the curiosity. Like knowing that we both grow as people separately and together and be curious about that. Like, what are you feeling about our relationship? And what are you longing for? And what's your vision of your future? and asking the questions to keep that fresh and alive. And then you said you wouldn't have a practice if we couldn't build that eroticism back into our relationship.

Can you share some pragmatic ways we can do that? Yeah. So one of the things that I think the universe is built on is appreciation. If you want one thing that's going to change your relationship or keep it going, it's appreciation. It's not criticism. Like when people come into my office as a couple and they're like, let me tell you everything that my partner does. And if you could just fix them, then we'd be fine. So they do this and they do that and we don't get enough of this and we never have sex. They give the list, right? You know, the more you

criticize your partner, the more they're going to like fold, get defensive, get pissed off, blame you, turn it around. The way to sort of turn that around is to talk about the things that you appreciate that are working because they, like I said, the law of the universe is you always get more of what you appreciate. So instead of saying, I hate it when you go to the left, I love it when you go to the right. Your partner will continue to go to the right instead of saying, well, you used to like it when I went to the left. You used to love it. And why don't you like it? You know, like there is an absolute cost-benefit ratio or analysis or whatever to saying, I really appreciate when you talk about yourself when we argue. I really appreciate when you can identify the things that you think

you can change in our relationship. That makes me feel like you're really listening to me. I really appreciate when you do the dishes at the end of the day because I'm so exhausted after work. There's sort of this famous story in therapy about when you throw a partner of fish, like it's the whale story. So there's this biologist who trained whales and she realized, that if she threw the whale of fish, the whale would do what she wanted it to. At first, she was like withholding the fish, thinking, you know, the whale would eventually figure it out. But she realized if she threw the whale of fish, then the whale would continue to repeat the behavior. So she went home and she told her partner, instead of, how can you never do the dishes?

She said, I really love it when you wipe down the counters. And so the next day she came home and all the counters were clean and the refrigerator was all wiped down. And she was like, oh, I kind of get it. Like, I threw them a fish. So that's what we call it in therapy. It's like, throw your partner a fish. What if your partner never does the behavior that you want them to do? Well, I mean, you can't train your partner like in a dog, like a whale, but you can appreciate them, like especially if we're talking about your sex life. You know, say you haven't had sex for a long time. You're, you're, you're, you're probably not having sex, not just because you're tired, but because you're too tired to go to the party that's not really worth it.

Because if it was worth it, you would get up and go. You would put on your clothes and you'd be like, let's push through, right? At least sometimes. So it may not just be that you're tired. It may be that the sex isn't worth staying awake for. So how can we improve the party? Like, how can we change the sex? It's not pathological to not want to have sex that's boring or not satisfying or you're not having an orgasm. Like, that's pretty normal, actually. It's pretty healthy. Like, don't have bad sex. But then how can we appreciate if we're like, oh, I appreciate how great you are at finding my clip, but they never do that. Like how. Don't lie to them. So how to tie that back in with the appreciation for me. So what I would do then is I would say, well, what do you appreciate?

Is there something that you've done in the past 10 years together that you have appreciated? That's worked for you. I really love when you, you know, lick my neck. I really love when you like rub my back. I really, it's really hot for me when you kiss the inside of my thigh, which is kind of close to what I want, but not quite. Like, that's really sexy for me. And then the second part of that would be something I like that I would like more of, So you're really working something that's already beneficial and you're expanding on it.

Instead of pointing out what's not working, which you're just going to get more up, you're pointing out what has worked and expanding on it. I would love if you would give me more backrobs. I would love if we would have more sex in the shower like we did 20 years ago, that one time. I would love it if you would, you know, kiss the inside of my thighs, but do it a little harder. I would love more of that. That's really great. And then and only then would I share something that I'd like to do that we've

never done. Like, I'd love it if you'd look my clit. Like, that's really where the action is. Yeah. Let me show you a diagram. Yeah. Let me point it out like this. But, you know, if you don't say the other things first, what happens is we go into our brainstem, like our fight or flight response when we start criticizing our partner. If you start with an appreciation, it opens your prefrontal cortex of your brain and you're like in your adult self instead of like your attack self. Or or your runaway self. And so you're like, wait, you appreciate me?

Tell me more. What else is there? And then you want more of that appreciation. So you're like open to flight nudges in a different direction because you're like, wait, I want more of these compliments. Yeah. And then you feel connected to each other. And then there's an open space between you.

And there's also some curiosity. Like, wait, what else is there? Like, what else are you appreciative of? And I'm so curious that you're appreciative of that shower that we took 20 years ago. like, what was it about that shower? That was so long ago, I didn't know you liked shower sex. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder.

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How important is regular sex to preventing and cheating in a relationship. I don't think we can put the responsibility for the person who's been being cheated on. I don't think we can put the responsibility on them for preventing cheating. Like I said before, if you're going to cheat, you're looking to become someone else. You're not necessarily looking to cheat on your partner. And like, we can't blame the victim here. It's not your fault if you're not having enough sex with them.

Like, they're still choosing to have an affair. Like, they're still choosing to lie, be dishonest. You know, unless they got roofied or got really drunk and fell into bed with someone, in which case they should call the police or they should go to rehab, most people have some responsibility in the fact that they're cheating on their partner. And it's the lack of integrity. That's the problem. It's not really about the sex.

It's the dishonesty. It's a lying, right? Because it doesn't matter what kind of sex they have. Like, maybe it's online with a... sex worker or online with someone they met on TikTok. So that's not really the issue. But in order to keep your relationship going and to keep it satisfying for you, I think it's important to continue to develop your sexual relationship.

Like if you're still having the same kind of sex you've been having for 20 years, eventually you're going to be like, okay, yawn. It's the curiosity again. Like there's no room for curiosity if you know what you're going to get is the same thing you've been getting every week for 20 years. And to be fair, I mean, you figure out what buttons to push and this works. So, you know, don't go to the left anymore. Like, I like it when you go to the right. So it makes total sense that we're still doing that. And, you know, don't stop doing that. But at the same time, if I'm like falling asleep while you're

doing it, it makes sense. I think the risk becomes when we're avoiding sex for whatever reason. It's either anatomical, like it's painful. We're tired. We're on some kind of medication. We just had a baby. We just went into menopause. Like something physical is happening. We're on medication.

We can't get an erection. We're having diabetes issues. We're on propitia for hair loss, which causes desire issues. Like every medication you take has a sexual side effect. So it could be something medical. It could be the relationship. Like, I'm not feeling connected. I'm resentful. I don't trust you. Something's going on in the relationship, so we're not having sex. Or it's the pleasure. Like, it's just not pleasurable. So again, why would I want to do something that's not pleasurable? Once we figure that out, if we want to make it more pleasurable on an ongoing basis, you do have to practice. I mean, it's like anything else, right? It's like piano or anything. Training a whale. Like, you have to continue to practice and make it better.

It's not fair to blame your partner for not giving you the sex you want. If you don't tell them, this is the sex that I want. So if I don't know what I want, they're just guessing. You know, if they get it right 50% of the time, it's just good for them. But I can't blame them if they get it wrong 50% of the time. I really have to figure that on my own. Like I have to figure out my side of the bridge, like my sexuality, what turns me on of what turns me off and what do I want. And you have to figure out your side of the bridge,

your sexuality and what you like, what you want to try. And then we have to figure out how to meet on the middle of the bridge. Like how do you talk about that? How do you connect? And I do think people should have a date like once a week that's just about their sexuality. It doesn't mean you have to have penis and vagina intercourse. But you should have something that says everything else in the week is for my companionship, for the Netflix, for the couch, for the dog, for the pizza, whatever. And that one half an hour a week is for our erotic connection. Because otherwise, we're just friends. We're just roommates. We can be good roommates and we can have fun and we can like each other and even love each other. But if we're going to have that erotic connection,

you actually need to continue to work on that as much, if not more than your friendship. What would that look like specifically if it's not just like we're scheduling a sex date, we will meet in bed at this time? Well, I want to also be clear that if you schedule a date, like some kind of central date once a week, if you've had, this is my commercial break. If you've had trauma growing up, like sexual trauma, that can feel sort of coercive. Like you've had non-consensual sex in the past and now you have to sort of be convinced and be coercive. into like, okay, I'll just show up even if I don't feel like it. That can feel bad. So if you've had trauma in your past, you should be the one that decides when do we do it, what time, what day. But I still think that you should do at the same time, the same day, every week, because it creates

like this erotic anticipation. And even if your head's like, oh, so don't feel like doing this, your body's going to go, but I kind of do. I'm kind of looking forward to it. It's almost like how you, I mean, this is a really bad analogy, but like you train your body to go to the bathroom at the same time every day by literally sitting on the toilet at that time. Like our body learns rhythms. Our body learns rhythms, whether they're sexy rhythms or not sexy rhythms. And leaning into that can be really helpful. Yeah, I would have said eating breakfast or going in the gym, but yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, okay. So what is, what does that actual date look like? Yeah. So I have like the six-week protocol. And actually, if your listeners write to me, I'll give it to them. If they say,

they heard me on your show. And you start off just with like a massage. So, but it has to be a one-sided massage. And it doesn't have to be a naked massage. It depends on if you're comfortable with each other, naked, or how long it's been since you've both been naked together, where one person gives the other person like a 10 or 15-minute massage and lets them fall asleep. So the harder working partner gets to be the receiver first and gets to just relax with no exercise. With no expectation, no touching of the bikini areas, no insertion, no orgasm, just give me something pleasurable and let me relax. And even if they suck at massage, even if they're like, oh, that's so miserable, like, try to just notice, like, what your body's doing and how your brain is like,

oh, I hate this person, or this is so nice, or it's no nice to not have the pressure to have to do anything in return. Just noticing is important. And then you, you just fall asleep. And then the next week, the other person gets to be the receiver. And then the third week, you get to integrate a little bit more touch. So maybe now you're naked or maybe now you let the other person touch you in different areas, but still no insertion, no orgasm. But you're just exploring what it feels like to be touched in a sensual way. And then the next week you switch. But remember that the goal is not sex. It's not penis and vagina sex. It's not oral sex. It's not orgasm. The point is,

no goal, just pleasure, just relaxation. And then the fifth and sixth week, you would integrate orgasm if that's consensual, if that's okay, but just through touch, no insertion. And I would recommend lube if you're doing it. But the idea is that it's not about getting to like the happy ending. It might just be about the pleasure of that. And you might help your partner by doing it yourself and showing them how to do it. But you could integrate any sort of touch into those six weeks.

The point is to agree on it before you do it and to take the goal of any kind of anything off the table. Maybe you take the goal of orgasm off the table. Maybe if your partner gets totally turned on and they're like, no, I really need to, then they go in the bathroom and take care of themselves. Like really take the pressure off. And what happens is that at the end of those six weeks, you're both in a little bit of, of a different place. Like, if you have sex on the other nights, that's fine, but that's not what this is. This is just sort of the assignment to remember what it feels like to touch and be touched. And even couples who feel like they're in a great place, do you think everybody could benefit from having one day a week?

This is our sensual, sexual date. It is not a date where we're sitting on the couch and our cozies. Yes, and I would recommend, don't go out to dinner. No one has sex after they eat pasta and drink wine. No, my best, best, best tip is you have sex before dinner. Always, always, always. Yeah. Because that dinner is like sexy and fun and you've like already done that. But yeah, no, everybody's too full. And there's no good, it's never good to have sex on your full. Oh, gross. No. And you could do it on a separate night, like, especially if you have kids or you don't go out often, like, have the out to dinner night or they out to the movies night and then have your sex night. Like, have that be a different date night. You know, it's okay to separate

them. I mean, if you do it on both, it's fine. But. That's a bonus. If you want to have your sex date once a week, I would make it like really your erotic date night. You know, like light some candles, put on some music, cover up the TV, put on sexy sheets, wear something that makes you feel sexy. Like make it separate from the rest of your life. I mean, that, it almost sounds like therapy speak, like when they say, well, just take a bath. But the reality is you need to carve out that. erotic side of your relationship. You need to put as much effort into the erotic in your relationship as you do in the companionship because it doesn't just happen by itself. It won't just fall into

place. The longer you're together, it won't just be like, oh, someday I'll feel like doing this. You really won't. And actually, you'll feel like doing it less and less, unless you actually carve it into your life. A lot of people say, well, it's not spontaneous. I think what they're saying is it's not impulsive, like, you know, walking down the hallway, throwing my partner against the wall, like that's the only kind of sex we should be having. That's very adolescent, by the way. But it's also, you know, if you plan your date night and you anticipate it, that's why people have affairs. You know, that's what makes a hot is that you plan on seeing your affair partner, you look forward to it. That's interesting. You make up the eroticism in your mind. You're like longing for it.

It's like that's what makes it juicy. Well, and also it makes sense because research shows that we enjoy anticipating things more than we actually enjoy the things themselves. Like vacations, we get more pleasure out of planning it, looking forward to it than we do out of the actual vacation because real things can come with problems and they can, you know, have itches and, you know, pay. Like, real things can have all sorts of things go wrong, but the anticipation is perfect in your mind.

That's like threesomes. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So much potential for problems. But that's really interesting. And so with affairs, so you're saying almost the planning can make it feel sexy. Well, I'm saying, you know, no, it's not spontaneous. And that's what an affair is like.

And therefore, it can be very sexy. Like, don't discount the fact that it's not spontaneous. Because people don't necessarily have spontaneous affairs unless they're drunk. So, you know, the intrigue of an affair is important to look at if your partner cheated and you're not willing to have a planned date. Like you're, you know, there's something to that. I'm not trying to blame the person who's been cheated. I'm just making a loose comparison.

Wait, do you think if somebody cheats when they're drunk, it's more forgivable? I don't think it's ever forgivable. Okay. What do you think of when somebody cheats if they're drunk? How does that impact the cheating? When I say I don't think it's ever forgivable, I think forgiveness is never the goal of healing after an affair. forgiveness is a power struggle. Forgiveness is I say I'm sorry, which is basically skin deep after I've cheated.

It means nothing. It's what I've seen on TV that I'm supposed to say. Now you owe me forgiveness, right? Because I said I'm sorry. What else do you want for me? Like I said I'm sorry. So I cheated. I was drunk.

I'm so sorry. But now it's in your hands. Now you have to give me forgiveness. You owe me forgiveness. And so what's the choice here? Like, you know, well, you keep bringing it up, but I said I was sorry. And, you know, you're mad at me still. I said I was sorry.

So now it's not going to resolve until you give me forgiveness. And now what do you have? You're like, you got to have the affair. Now you get the forgiveness. I get nothing. And on the times when it feels like our relationship is out of balance, you're going to take back your forgiveness. You're going to say, you know, today I don't forgive you.

Because what else you have? So now forgiveness is just about power. It's not really the goal. Like forgiveness is not a therapeutic goal. It's not in the DSM. It's not what we shoot for in therapy. We're not supposed to. Good therapists don't do that.

But forgiveness will happen organically when there's empathy. Like if you say to your partner, God, you must have been really drunk. And I don't blame you for having sex with that person. They are hot. And, you know, we haven't had sex for six months. And you were really mad at me. and you and I haven't talked about our relationship for a long time. And affairs can be wake-up or breakup moments.

You must have really wanted my attention. Now, I wouldn't have done it that way. Certainly not with that person and certainly not in that bar, certainly not in that bar bathroom, but I get why you did it. And that doesn't mean I forgive you, but it makes sense that you feel that way and that you felt that way.

And now you would have to work on empathizing for how that felt for me. How do you think that felt for me? all our friends were there and you were wasted and like, can you at all, like, think about how that felt for me? If you say, well, I'm sorry, you clearly don't know how it felt for me. So how much the drunkenness impacts it really matters for how much you can empathize with the drunkenness impacting that situation, essentially. I think the problem there is the drunkenness. Yeah. Not the affair. Like, I would be concerned

that my partner was so drunk that they felt out of control enough to do something that they supposedly thought was outside of their morality or their integrity? Like, like, what's going on with your drinking? What if we can't find that empathy? What if we're like, I have never been tempted by another person in this way? I can't believe this would be your reaction to this situation. I think everyone needs to sort of redefine their monogamy agreement over and over and over. What is a monogamy agreement for people who aren't familiar? It's like going back to how we first started. Like, what does it really mean to be in a relationship? What does it mean for you and I to be, quote-unquote, monogamous, or open or non-monogamous, or polyamorous? Like, what is our relationship

really going to look like? If you masturbate to pornography, is that cheating or is that private? You know, you've been doing that since you were 12? Is that mean that you're going to keep doing it? Or does that mean when we get married, you're going to stop? Is that mean you're still going to strip clubs? Is that mean you're still going to, you're going to have sex with women because it's a woman and not a man, and that's okay. Like, what is, what does it really mean to be in a commitment? And then to be really explicit about a lot of things that we implicitly assume. Like, it's not cheating if you do it with another woman. Like, it's not cheating if you go to a strip club. If you don't touch the person, if it's just online, if it's, if you're drunk. Or if you have like a workwife or things like that.

Exactly. If it's just. just emotional. If you just tell all your friends about our private sex life, like, you know, what is actually cheating and what is monogamy? What does that really mean? You know, I work with people who are in polyamorous relationships who have six, eight partners, but if they go out to lunch with someone and don't tell the rest of the partners, it feels like cheating because that's not in our agreement. Like, you didn't tell us. So really understanding what your agreement is, maybe the agreement was broken when you went out to the bar with all your friends after work, and you didn't tell me you were going to the bar to get drunk. You said you were going to come home for dinner.

You were supposed to pick up dinner on your way home. So that was the beginning of the trust, like the betrayal, the trust between us. Like, I think there has to be a bigger conversation around what does it really mean to be committed in this relationship? I assume that you were coming home every Tuesday night. Like I thought we had that agreement, but we never talked about. about it. You thought, no, Tuesday night is the night we all go out after work. I thought you just knew. So to make our own monogamy agreement, are we just sitting down and trying? I mean, a lot of these things wouldn't even occur to me to talk about, which makes the idea of making this type of agreement feel difficult. So how should we approach that? Well, certainly people do it after

there's been a breach. Right. Which I, you know, when I wrote the new monogamy, which is redefining your relationship after infidelity, it was about how to create a relationship agreement, whether it was really traditionally monogamous or all the way open. And people were like, wait, do we have to have an affair to do this? Like, shouldn't we do this beforehand? And that's why I wrote open monogamy, because I do think you should have a relationship agreement. It doesn't have to be in writing. It doesn't have to be hanging on a wall. You don't have to have it signed by a lawyer. But I think it is an ongoing conversation, like just like we renew our license. Like you have to have it be flexible and fluid. And like you said, I don't know if I would bring up all those specific things, but you might bring up, you know, what do you think cheating is?

You know, are we still going to tell each other every time we masturbate in the shower? Are we going to still go out with our friends on Tuesday nights? Are we, if we get drunk, are we going to tell each other? Maybe we don't live together, but we don't, you know, tell each other every time we go out with other people. Like, what does it mean to have an emotional affair? Like all those questions are really super important, especially as you get deeper and deeper into a commitment. So let's say we have been cheated on. I have so many friends who really struggle with the decision whether to stay or to go in a relationship if they've been cheated on. What factors should they be considering?

Some affairs are what I call a can opener. Like they really are a way for people to get out of a relationship. You know, they're a way for us unconsciously to say, I really don't want to be. in this relationship anymore. So I'm going to cheat to get out of it. So you'll be mad at me and break up with me. And I can passive aggressively make you the one to break up. Or I can do it in sort of a nice way where you get to be the good guy and I get to be the bad guy and you can tell all your friends what a schmuck guy was. And, you know, those are kind of pretty clear. Like, it's a wake up or breakup moment. And you can usually feel like, oh, this is a breakup moment. you really want out. But if it's a, oh, God, that really made us look at our relationship, like,

where are we? Where are we going? What do we want? How did that happen? You know, when you get to this insightful place where you say, not you did this to me, but this happened to us, what was going on with us, then you can make some different decisions like, can you really be honest about what you were looking for and who you became in that relationship. And why do you feel like you can't be that person with me? Are you blaming me saying, oh, well, she would never be into that. How do you know? Did you ever ask me? You know, I have people who sometimes they'll cheat with an outside partner because the outside partner is really kinky. You know, they'll go to a sex worker or someone that they feel like they can act out those fantasies with. And because they think, oh, my partner would never do that. And then the

partner finds out, they're like, you could have asked. I don't know if I'd be into that, but you could have, we could have figured it out first. What if it's for validation? Because that can be a hard thing to get from your partner after a certain point, the idea that you're still hot, that you're sexy, that you're successful, that you're attractive. What if that's the reason for the cheating? Well, let's say, like, I see this sometimes with moms who are like, you know, my partner just sees me at, like, I have a gay couple and two moms. And one of them, had an affair because she was like, you know, my wife just sees me as a mom. Like, we're just moms all day long. And this outside partner said, oh my God, you're so hot. And I remembered,

I remembered those compartmentalized parts of myself where I was like, yes, I am still hot. And I felt like I couldn't get that at home. But once the affair happened, now there's space in between them where the wife says, I don't even know you. How could you do this to me? Who are you? are you that this other person was so attracted to you? And now all of a sudden there's this space in between them and they're having sex all the time, which is not uncommon. People come into the office and they go, you know, my partner's had this affair and now we're really having hot sex like we've never had before and it's really embarrassing. I heard that from a friend and it really surprised me. They're going through a cheating situation and they're having like the best sex of their lives.

Yeah. It doesn't necessarily last forever, but it's very, very common. How do we suss out that type of where like we can't validate our partner more inside the relationship. I'm thinking particularly about I know a lot of men who feel maybe they're not as successful at work as they hope they would be. Maybe they, I don't know, they're entering, they're getting older and they're not feeling as validated in their lives. And they want just that like hit of going to a bar and having a woman be like, oh yeah, you're sexy, you're hot, you're successful, you're attractive.

How do they get that from their partners if that's what they're looking for? Maybe they don't need it from their partners. I mean, what's wrong with going to a bar and having other people hit on them? I don't know. I mean, it could validate your monogamy agreement with your partner. Like, if that bothers your partner, then that is not good. It depends. I mean, if your partner's like, I don't care who you flirt with.

If you want to go and get other women to flirt with you or other men to flirt with you, go for it. As long as you don't sleep with them or as long as you don't take them home or go get what you need or whatever. You know, as long as that's okay. If that's not okay with us between us, then that's a deeper. conversation. Like if I feel like, look, I can't go out and talk to people, then how is that making you so insecure if I really, really am never going to sleep with them? How do we know what to compromise on? Like if our partners, like I like to do this kind of stuff in the bedroom or I wish you were more like this. And that's not who we feel like we are, what we feel like we want to do.

How do we know if we should compromise because that's what we'll keep the relationship intact and healthy and happy, or if that's us compromising some sort of essence of who we are, and that's not like a fair ask that the partner is making. God, well, I think you just answer that question. Like, how could you ever compromise who you are just to make a relationship work? But we're compromising ourselves in little ways in relationships all the time, whether it's like, oh, I wouldn't normally wake up at this time or sleep on the side of the bed or eat this dinner.

Like, it's so hard to know what compromises are compromising your true morals, your true values, your true self. Well, I don't think sleeping on the wrong side of the bed is compromising your true moral. This is just an example. I mean, I think you answered that by saying, you know, if you're asked to compromise who you really are to make a relationship work, then you're never going to be happy and you're going to resent your partner. So, first of all, I don't think compromise works. I think compromise implies both of us are just going to get part of what we want and then we're both going to be unhappy. So I don't think compromise, particularly in therapy is not a goal.

Like if you have a discussion about what is that? the desire underneath the ask? Like, what are you really looking for? You know, like, for instance, if somebody asks you, I really want to tie you up during sex, that would be really hot for me. And you're like, no friggin way is that ever going to happen. Like, I'm claustrophobic. That turns me off. Don't do it. The other partner who has that desire, if they could dig deeper and say, well, what's hot for me about that, what turns me on about that is that I, feel like I have no control in the rest of my life, it would be really hot for me to think, like, that you wanted me to have that control all over you. Well, you might say, well, okay, just pull my

hair. That would be hot for me. You know, like to understand the desire underneath, until you can find a place of empathy, like really find that connection, like, oh, that makes sense. Now I get why you want that. So it's not just that you want to control me and say, sleep on that side of the bed. It's that when you sleep on that, the other side of the bed, it hurts your back. Oh, I can get that. I can work with that. So dig, dig, dig, dig. If you don't understand it, dig deeper, dig deeper.

If you don't understand it, it's because you haven't really understood the real reason underneath it. And they might not either. Like, you might need to dig deeper together. I need to go to therapy and get some help. Yeah. Do you think love is enough? This is something I hear all the time is like they hurt me. I see this, this and this is wrong with the relationship.

but I love them so much. Like the love is there. Is that enough? Love is a very complex thing. Like, I can love my kids and want to stay with my partner. I can love my parents and want to stay close to living next to them. I can love my city and still want to move out. Like, love is complicated, you know?

Like, I think you can say, I think what you're asking is, I love my partner. It doesn't matter if they cheated. on me? Like, should I stay with them anyway? I think it goes back to your question about, you know, sacrificing your own morality, sacrificing your own integrity. If you feel like by staying with this person, I'm going to lose myself, they're going to fall out of love with you anyway. Because who they fell in love with is not you anymore. So, you know, if you don't care enough about yourself, then what's the point of trying to fake it to be with somebody? That's not love. You know,

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That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. For the person who did cheat, because you said sometimes this is like somebody trying to essentially blow up a relationship. Are there questions that they can ask themselves to get clear on maybe if that was their motivation, even if they're not consciously aware of it? I think no one should make a decision in the crisis phase of an affair or recovery. Like after the disclosure or the discovery of an affair, it's a crisis. It really blows up everything. And you're kind of like, it's like getting hit by a car.

You're like, whoa, what the hell? Don't make any decisions about staying together or breaking up. Like wait, give it some time because if you start saying divorce, divorce breaking up, like it just ratchets up the emotion. There's three phases of recovery. There's the crisis, which is very impactful. But it's actually kind of short. And the middle phase is the insight where you go, wait a minute, how the hell did we get here? What do you mean you were drunk?

What do you mean you were in the bar? What are you saying? Like, what are you saying like you love me but? Like, what do you mean you were at work with this woman till 12 o'clock at night? Like, you start to dig underneath and say, where were we? Like, what was going on with us? How come we didn't have sex for six years? Like, what was going on with us at the time?

You start to dig into the insight into what was happening in the relationship. You start to look at things more realistically. And then and only then do you go into the third phase, which is the vision of like, what's going to happen now? So you're really going into first, the next. narrative, like the story. Well, this is what they did to me. This is what happened. I can never live with her again. You know, this story that we have is usually filtered through our past experiences. Well, my mother cheated, my father cheated. I knew my uncle cheated. My best friend got cheated on. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Whatever that story is, that's our first crisis response.

All that narrative filters to the top. And then we have to sort of let all that dust settle to figure out what we really feel and what we really want. That's why I don't tell all your friends. Don't tell your mother. Don't tell your neighbors. Like, wait. Because everyone's going to have an opinion and everyone's going to make, you know, decisions for you and tell you what to do. Like, wait a little bit. Where are you getting your emotional support from then during that time? You can still get emotional support without telling people the details of what happened. We're going through a really hard time in their relationship. I am really questioning whether I want to stay with this person. I am struggling with my life right now.

You know, we have a big problem that we're deciding whether or not to go to therapy. We really need to go to a therapist and get support. Like, you know, there's a lot of places you can get support without saying, my partner is an asshole. Because people that love you are going to align with you. And then when you decide to stay together, they're going to be like, are you kidding? Let's say you decide to stay with your partner who has cheated. How do you get your friends, your family, the people who love you to move past

this thing that you've done the work to move past. Well, first of all, don't tell them. But if you have, if you have, yeah, if they know. You know, nobody's in your relationship. So nobody knows the ins and outs of what's really going on between you. And most likely, statistically, a lot of them have gone through affairs or they've been cheated on or cheated. As much as they might have an opinion about it, they don't really have access to your

emotional, intimate life. And so you just have to tell them. Like, we've worked really hard. on to therapy. We've worked it through. We've made a decision. We've decided this made us stronger. You know, a lot of the people that I see that have had affairs have said, you know, maybe that was the best thing that could have happened to us because it woke us up. It made us realize we were not going down a good path. Where we were headed, we were eventually not going to make it. And this made us realize, oh, we need to communicate. We need to go to therapy. We need to work on our sex life.

We need to do something radically different. And we're changing. Yeah, you have the line in your book, is an opportunity for change. And I found that really hopeful. Like I found the idea that this could be ultimately a positive thing in one's relationship to be a really hopeful stance. Yeah, I think all attachment injuries can be so traumatic if depending on what's happened in your own past and there are a chance to look at yourself and decide what is it that I really want in a relationship. What am I bringing? And what am I really, what am I really looking for? and how do I ask for it? It's so hard, though, because what you're doing sort of is comparing what you have

with the flaws and all to what you don't know is out there. You know what I mean? Because if you're leaving your partner, you're taking a chance on whatever else is out there, and that can be a really hard and scary comparison. The known flaws to the unknown potentially better, potentially worse situation. Well, that has to do with partner selection. So just because you trade your partner in for someone else doesn't mean that you're not going to get the same thing. Who we choose for a partner has to do with how we grew up,

what our parents were like, what our parents' relationship were like. Before you go trading your partner in for someone else, you've got to really figure out why you pick the person that you're with. How do we figure that out? Go to therapy. Are there any questions, though, or little things we could do right now to ask ourselves? Yes. Don't blame your partner, say, I know this about them. I didn't see it coming. They weren't like this when I first met them. What did you see that you didn't admit to yourself? What were the red flags that now looking back, you're like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew that. What are you attracted to that actually could be painful for you?

How are you sabotaging yourself and getting exactly what you're asking for? How is this working for you? How is it working for you to be the martyr, the victim? How is it working for you to create this narrative of, I never get what I want, I always get hurt, I'm not getting the best of what I deserve. Like, what's your narrative? How is that playing out? Who are you choosing that is reinforcing that?

Because we will look in the environment for things to prove what we believe about ourselves until we find it. And then we're like, okay, I found this person that will prove to me, you know, I'm pretty worthy, but there's a part of me that believes deep down that I'm really not lovable. And I will find someone who pushes that button. And I will say, oh, see, I told you. Unless you, you know, work on yourself, you're going to pick someone that brings out some of the same issues. Like, water rises to its own level. So wherever you are, that's what you're going to pick.

Even unconsciously, it's like zebras, you know, they pick each other out in the herd based on their stripes. So we don't consciously look for someone who's going to hurt us, but we might consciously look for someone that we think, oh, this person's exactly opposite of my father. but they might hurt us in similar ways. You know, our father maybe was never home because they were drinking all the time. So we're never going to be with anyone who drinks. So we're going to pick someone who works all the time

is really responsible. Well, they're never home either. So they work all the time. They have a great job. We're home by ourselves, just like we were when we were little kids. Same wound, same hurt, same loneliness. Even though consciously we pick someone totally different.

So we have this natural radar to pick out those stripes, even though we might trade up because our husband comes home or a partner, whoever, comes home on the weekends as I love you. I'm sorry, I wasn't home. I'll be home, you know, over vacation. We're going to have a great time together. I've been thinking of you. I'm going to text you during the day. Much different than dad.

But we're still going to pick someone who's going to bring out all the stuff that we need to work on in ourselves. Can we do that work within the bounds of a relationship? with somebody that we picked before we did the work? Does that make sense? The whole point of a relationship is to do the work. I think the whole point of choosing someone, whoever it is, a friend, a podcast host, a kid, anyone in your life, you're with them in order to do the work. Okay. That's hopeful too. That's hopeful too. Because I think I could see somebody sitting here listening and saying, well, shoot, I picked my partner when I was 21.

I hadn't done any of this work. And now I'm screwed. And you're like, No, these relationships provide you with the opportunity for healing. Absolutely. Let's talk about the trust thing because I've had friends who are cheated on and they're like, partner will be like, oh, you can look at my phone whenever you want. You can track my location, all these things. And my friends are like, well, that's nice, but I don't want to have to nanny you or like do this labor to rebuild our trust.

What do you think about those types of things? And are there healthy ways to build back that trust? Well, I agree with you. I don't think parentifying your partner is the way. Who wants to, like, chase their partner around and check their email? Who has time for that? Like, and then what are you going to do? You're going to punish them if they break the rules?

Like, then you've parentified the relationship and then it's totally desexualized. And if somebody wants to cheat, they're going to cheat. Like, they'll figure it out. That's the whole point of cheating. Especially if they, like, know what you're checking to, you know, yeah, totally. Okay, so how do we build back that trust if that trust has been breached? The whole idea of trust is that it's an inside job. Like, you can, if you cheat.

on me, you can swear up and down, you'll never do it again, you'll jump through all the hoops, you'll give me all your passwords. I can follow you around in my car, I can put a tracker on your car. But it's not so much about me learning to trust you, because frankly, I may never trust you again. You know, you have sort of existentially blown my mind around trust in the world. You know, I thought you, of all people, would be the person that would never let me down. Now I know you could. Trust is really about me learning to trust. my intuition again. Like my intuition let me down. I let myself down. How come I didn't listen to that little teeny tiny voice that was buried deep inside? How come all my friends told me and I didn't listen?

Like, it's our intuition that betrays us. That takes a lot longer to get over. Like for me to trust my intuition again is a big thing, especially as a woman, right? Because we need our intuition to survive in the world. I have to learn how to discern the difference between fear. What do you mean you're going out after work? What do you mean you're going out with your friends versus my intuition, which says, oh, you can go out with your friends. You sound nervous telling me, which I understand. That makes sense because I am a little suspicious. But deep down, my intuition says you're just going to go out with your friends. You're not going to cheat on me. And I actually believe you. This is the hardest part I think about being cheated on is that I ask people on a scale of one.

to 10, how much did you know, did you know that this was happening? Because a lot of times we do know, we just don't want to believe it. It's easier sometimes not to believe it at the time. So that can shift the blame from like, I am a total victim, you did this to me, to, well, I kind of knew this was going to happen, but I didn't have time to deal with it. Or I didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe. Yeah, I didn't want to believe. I didn't want to believe this about this person that loved me or character. about me or that I was in a new relationship with or I don't want to deal with it. You know, this is the work that you have to do on yourself around trust and also around a partner.

To be able to share with your partner, you know, you have really screwed up my intuition. Now I have a lot of work to do on myself and how can you work together to help each other with that? What do people normally rate it on a SCEV 1 to 10? Like how high are people usually? People are much more aware than they at first will think. Like at first, they're like, I have no idea. Like, it was like a two. I didn't know it all. And then once they give it some sort of honest look, they're like, well, maybe it was more like a six or seven.

Like, I kind of knew, but I didn't want to deal with it. Like, I was busy at work, the kids. I thought I would have to, like, really confront them. I didn't have the energy. I was too tired. Like, there's so many reasons that we give ourselves for not trusting our intuition. And if you think somebody, and this is for all your listeners, if you think someone's cheating on you, it could be your anxiety.

you could be wrong, but really go below that anxiety, go below the suspicion and listen to that inner voice. It could be that you're not trusting yourself. And just because you confront your partner and they're like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. Like really listen to your gut and trust it and be okay with whatever that discrepancy is. So building that sense of self-trust and that intuition is so important for being able to make the decision of whether you want to stay with this person, whether you're the cheater or you're the cheated on. Because I really want to leave people with as pragmatic of action steps as possible, are there other questions we should be asking our partner or ourselves to make that decision? Yeah, I love that you turned it around, around, you know, if I'm the cheater, I need to also

make the decision if I'm going to stay or go. Because it's not just if I've been cheated on, should I stay or go. Sometimes cheating is a sign that I'm looking to swing. from branch to branch. Like, I really want to know that I have other options out there before I leave. Sometimes people will cheat before they even know that they want to leave. And that's kind of the sign that wakes them up and says, wow, I really do want to explore other options. And I see that in women, gay and straight, more than I see that in men. Like, it's almost like unconsciously we start to explore before our heads. will confront the relationship problems.

I don't recommend that. I think you should confront your relationship first. But if you find yourself doing that, then it's a good time to ask, like, what am I actually trying to accomplish there? Am I trying to end the relationship? Am I looking for another bridge to something else? And the other sort of practical question

about your partner cheating is has to do more with the communication about the cheating. If you feel more dissatisfied with the conversation around the affair than you do about the affair, then it probably is a sign that it's going to be hard to work on this. Like crisis is an opportunity for change, but both partners have to want to create that change. But that being said, yes, and know that your partner's going to communicate differently than you.

One of the biggest blocks for people is when they want to know why. Why did you cheat on me? You know, tell me why it happened. That's an almost unanswerable question. It's like, why did you eat that cookie to a little kid who stuck their hand in the cookie jar? Like, it's not so much why that you're actually going to get answered. And because sometimes people can't articulate that. Like, why did I do that?

They're not going to say, well, Dr. Tammy said that I did it because I was looking for another part of myself and I was seeking, you know. Yeah. But, you know, people usually don't have that level. of insight right away. It takes a while to figure it out. They might first blame you. Well, you didn't have sex with me or you weren't paying attention to me. Secondly, they might say it was the opportunity. It was there. I couldn't help it. Usually the third level is when they start to dig a little bit deeper and go, well, let me really think about who I became when I was with that person. Sometimes it's like a second adolescence.

Like I needed separation and individuation to be a sexual person. And so I'm breaking away from my family, but now you're my family. So I'm leaving you. And which brings us back to like you need to have these erotic moments and like really create that eroticism in your relationship. Yeah. I think everybody should do that regardless of an affair or not. In your practice, are couples typically happier if they stay together and work on it or if they use this as an opportunity of like, okay, we should separate. I don't know if there's a typical. I do know that people do stay together

more often now than they used to. I think because people are tired of getting divorced, I think this generation has seen their parents get divorced and seen their parents cheat and lie, and they're like, you know what, I don't want to do that. And then people get married later than ever before too, so they wait longer to make that decision. If you're not married and you're just dating or living together, I think there's more likelihood that you'll end the relationship because you feel like you still have options. If you have kids, it's harder to break up. And so sometimes people will work a little harder to make it work out. Just look, if there's alcohol involved, there's narcissism, if there's repetitive cheating, like there's some red hot points, red flags,

whatever you want to call them, pain points that you really need to look at and take note of and really go to therapy about, you know, don't expect that you're just going to have a conversation over a glass of wine and figure it out on your own. We like to end with homework assignments. Oh, good. For anybody who's listening who's in the middle of this sort of cheating crisis, whether they've cheated or been cheated on, can you give one homework assignment a question they can ask something they can do pragmatically to begin to heal and move in the right direction? Yeah, I think you need to revisit your monogamy agreement. So, like I said, if you want to write to me, I can also send you 37 questions. to ask each other about your monogamy agreement, it's time.

This is the time. It's not going to happen again where you're going to have the opportunity to lay it all on the table and be so brutally honest with each other about what you want your relationship to look like. Like use it as an opportunity to do this work to create this change. Yeah, and dig deep. Like really be honest. Like what you said before about, I don't know if I would think to ask my partner all those

questions. Now you might. Now's the time. Where can people write to you? They can write to me through my website, which is Dr. Tammy nelson.com, D-R-T-A-M-M-M-Y-N-E-L-S-O-N-N-O-N-C-O-N-C-O-N-M-A-M-M-A. Amazing. And can you just take a second to shout out your books, your podcast, anything else that you want to spotlight? My podcast is The Trouble with Sex.

And my books can all be found at Amazon or on my website. My recent one is Open Monogamy. There's also, if you're in an affair going through an affair, try when you're the one who cheats or the new monogamy. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Tammy. This was amazing. I know so many people who have cheated or been cheated on, and we are just not talking about this topic openly, which is making the situation so much worse. Help me bring these taboo topics out into the open by sharing this episode. It'll spark so many interesting conversations. I've been having so many interesting conversations about everything we talked about here since we recorded it.

and also I really, really, really hope that it finds and helps the people out there that need it. If you're new here, if you're here because somebody sent you a link to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. We share evidence-based wellness information two times a week, every single week. We talk about everything from gut health to why you're not behind in life according to science, to relationships, to friendships, basically anything and everything that you need to live your healthiest, happiest life. So make sure that you hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on YouTube, because then the podcast will show up right in your feed and you will never miss an

episode. We are going to be doing a newsletter about whether different people chose to stay or go when they were cheated on or when they cheated and how that decision worked out for them. So head over to lizmoody.substack.com, drop your email in and then that'll go right to your inbox so you will not miss it when that newsletter comes out. We're able to bring you this. this show completely for free thanks to the amazing, amazing brands that we are so lucky to partner with. If you are looking for science-backed products to elevate your entire life, everything from your workouts to your skincare routines, you can find all of our current discount codes at Liz Moody.com slash codes. And come hang out with me on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody.

It's a really great way to be reminded of all the information that we share in all these episodes because I know they can be quite dense. So these are like little tidbits, the takeaways. and then you can be reminded like, oh yeah, I should actually incorporate that into my life. Okay, I love you. I am so grateful to get to spend this time with you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language.

This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.