When many couples consult mental health professionals to receive relationship therapy, what they bring to healing is not the pathological aspects and flaws in their own souls; He doesn't realize that he is the relationship. The first thing I tell them is that in therapy, we do not look for someone who is flawed, wrong, or a scapegoat; It sometimes happens that philosophical and moral issues are left out of the psychotherapy process. Then I continue: “Every relationship is a living organism, and the moment you start a relationship, you bring this living organism you gave birth to therapy.” The sick one; not people, but relationships. This relationship has taken a blow and maybe it's the flu, maybe it's cancer, maybe it's congenitally disabled, maybe it's in a vegetative state..."
And maybe it has a thousand scratches...
Because being cheated on is like a thousand scratches...
In therapy, we set out to close a thousand cuts and restructure the relationship. We know that in this journey, couples will not be able to start their relationships from where they left off. After this experience, they will become completely different people and start a new relationship that is completely different, new, perhaps more satisfying, perhaps more lively, but has a painful history of infidelity in its past.
What is Cheating?
Cheating; These are emotional or sexual actions and discourses that occur one or more times with a third person without the knowledge, permission or consent of the current partner. Concrete indicators of deception are required: correspondence, action, statement, discourse, behavior, etc. Does a person go to jail when he thinks about killing someone or when he kills someone? It is only possible for something to be punished or become a crime when it is put into action. This also goes for cheating. Many of my clients are confused about defining cheating. Creating fantasies involving another person, being influenced by another person; Even though there is no behavior that he puts into action, he confuses it with cheating. If there is no concrete data, only thoughts and feelings, we cannot talk about deception here.
When it comes to deception, how people perceive the situation they experience is also very important. Cheating exists in the presence of the feeling of guilt. The more intense the guilt the cheater feels, the more uncomfortable the cheater feels about the incident. The more it is, the more cheating it is.
What are the underlying causes of cheating?
Psychosocial Reasons
Excessive glorification of the opposite sex, which is very difficult to reach on time for various reasons, and the feeling of helplessness due to not being able to reach the opposite sex on time, are among the psychosocial reasons for cheating. .
Especially my clients who come to couple therapy are those who entered puberty late in middle school and high school, and who were deprived of the emotional and sexual relationship they should have with the opposite sex at that age, due to socioeconomic difficulties, by working and studying at an early age. , or when those who were not noticed enough by the opposite sex during adolescence for any reason are preferred after marriage, their subconscious feelings resurface and the thought of achieving it motivates them to cheat.
If these people, who have a subconscious feeling of inadequacy, also get married early, their masculinity and They want to try and discover their femininity on people other than their spouses, with whom they grew up and where agape/friendship is dominant.
Relational Reasons
From couples When anyone finds himself in a relationship problem that he feels helpless to solve, in order to exist in the relationship, that is, in order to prevent his marriage from ending, he unconsciously builds an outlet for himself where he can escape the stress of the problems that cannot be solved in his marriage, and in this way he regains the energy he lost in his relationship.
There are two types of exit points from the relationship: pathological/diseased exit points and healthy exit points. At healthy starting points, we can talk about workaholism, the sacred mother role, various devotions such as association work, and socialization. In other words, other areas where the person steals the time of the relationship and invests his energy, as if practicing, other than his current partner...
There are addictions at pathological exit points; A person who is addicted to alcohol, cigarettes or gambling may have sex with his addictions or with a woman or a man. Created by the person who resists the stress of his marriage and stays in it by cheating We close this diseased starting point in couple therapies and reach the deep problem of the relationship that causes cheating and treat the relationship. Of course, not every cheating is a 100% indication of marital problems. Let's take a look at the individual reasons.
Individual Reasons
The most common reason for cheating in therapies is acting out the unexpressed anger towards the spouse through cheating. hit. In this way, the person punishes his/her spouse. When the cheater comes to therapy, he is usually unaware that he has suppressed the anger he feels towards his partner and enjoys the second relationship without feeling guilty, with the pleasure of punishing his partner. In therapy, we make these people aware of the anger they keep in their unconscious.
We see another reason for individual cheating in relationships where closeness is excessive. We see that in relationships where one of the couples is overly controlling and the other is overly compliant, the boundaries of the self disappear and the person who leaves control to his partner in every matter deceives himself in order to see himself as a separate individual and opens a space of his own in his life that excludes his partner.
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People with attachment problems are more prone to cheating. Especially people who think they are superior to their spouses because their narcissistic traits are dominant, see cheating as a right. While addicted personalities integrate another relationship into their lives in which they will feel sufficient due to their feelings of worthlessness, they cannot end their marriages in which they feel worthless due to their self-confidence problems and concerns about loneliness.
The menopause-andropause period in women and men. They cheat on their spouses with younger partners to challenge their existential fear of death at a later age and to show that they are still admired. The tendency to cheat also increases during the 30-year-old and 40-year-old syndromes, which are transitional periods in which the roles of motherhood and fatherhood are acquired. People exist in this process. It comes to an intense process of reviewing one's emotions and body. Especially in cases where the attention is directed towards the child after the birth of the child, the spouse who feels worthless may turn to another relationship to feel more special.
When he is cheated on, a person who feels worthless, regretful, guilty, hopeless, angry, powerless; He wants to name this situation, know the reasons, solve the problem and most of all, he wants to forgive deep down. What he will forgive is not the infidelity or cheating itself, but his spouse. When such an earthquake occurs in your relationship, the first thing you should do is to bring your sick relationship to psychotherapy and consult a couple therapist who is an expert in his field.
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