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Rethinking Infidelity: A TED talk for anyone who has ever loved

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“Betrayal in a relationship comes in many forms. There are many ways that we betray our partner: with contempt, with neglect, with indifference, with violence. Sexual betrayal is only one way to hurt a partner. In other words, the victim of an affair is not always the victim of the marriage.”

 ” … when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t always our partner that we are turning away from, but the person that we have ourselves become. And it isn’t so much that we’re looking for another person, as much as we are looking for another self.”

Here are the things that would be more hurtful than my partner having sex with someone else:

  • Spending too much money (so much that you can’t contribute to shared goals)
  • Never taking a vacation with me (if we’ve been together 1+ year and we have the money)
  • Hating my friends
  • Dismissing how I feel/things I say
  • Words or actions that intentionally hurt my feelings
  • Refusal to change a behavior/situation that is hurtful or damaging to me

I share this list not to minimize or rationalize my own infidelity. Instead, thinking of what are the most hurtful things that can be done to me personally in a relationship has given me a deeper understanding of just how much pain I caused.

For me, being cheated on is not the most painful thing. It is not the deepest betrayal — even though it is thought of in society as the ultimate betrayal. But realizing that every individual might have their own personal “ultimate betrayal” has opened me sympathy — and empathy — more than ever before.

For me, the things on this list have one thing in common: They are all a denial of my needs and desires. I need to be heard, to feel valued, to know that I am important enough for consideration. Maybe that takes the form of a vacation, which I recognize as a trivial thing. But to me, it is symbolic of so many things important to a relationship: a commitment of time and resources; a desire to spend time together; acknowledgement of my passion for travel.

The items on my list reflect my need to feel safe — emotionally as well as physically.

When I do not feel safe, when I do not feel valued, when I do not feel cared for — that is the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life. Greater than the pain of abuse or assault. Greater than the pain of healing from those things. Greater even than the pain of death, the loss of loved ones.

It is pain almost beyond description, because it touches on the deepest of my wounds, the root of all my shame. When I need, I feel bad about myself.

The ability to recognize that I’m allowed to have needs; the process of beginning to ask for things I need — I have just begun to do this work. It is slow and painful. And so the pain of an unmet or denied need is magnified by the pain of all my unmet and denied needs, over the entire course of my lifetime. It is every nagging voice that says, “You are a burden. Why are you bothering me?”

This, I realize, is the pain I have caused some by my cheating. Not all, because I’m sure everyone’s list of betrayals looks a little different. Maybe that’s something we should consider, before we embark on relationships, or before we abandon them. What hurts you the most? What can’t you get over?

I can get over these things. I can delay blame, because under each of these actions is a root cause, a wounding of its own. And I of all people understand when our past hurts cause us to do things that hurt others. So I am patient, and I am kind. In the short-term, these are not deal breakers. Not for me. I believe that in relationships, what happened in the past does not matter, should not matter. It is the things that keep happening that we should not overlook.



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