The decision-making mechanism to change is very difficult. It involves not only our brains and hormones, but also the attitudes of society, patterns and problems that we bring to our marriage, including from the parental family.
What Science Says
- From the point of view of neuroscience, the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a significant role in maintaining any romantic relationship. He participates in the system of reward and the formation of addictions - including drugs and, in part, love. We want our partner to behave in a certain, pleasant way for us, because the brain then perceives his actions as a reward. But as soon as his actions cease to satisfy us, the magical effect of dopamine weakens, there is a need to find another source of pleasure. Dopamine is, in fact, the first passion. When it calms down and the relationship gets back on track, you have to make an effort to keep it going. Not everyone is ready for this.
- Oxytocin, also called the attachment hormone, also plays an important role. For a long time, it was associated only with the relationship between a mother and a child, but then it turned out that it is also developed with close contact of lovers. For oxytocin to make your marriage stronger, you need to hold hands, hug, kiss, and yes, have sex. The lack of physical intimacy in a couple leads to cheating, not only because a man or woman is deprived of the opportunity to have sex, but also because when you do not touch or press against each other, the oxytocin threads that bind you weaken.
- Psychotherapist Esther Perel argues that cheating often has nothing to do with our partner. She becomes part of her search for herself - including through accepting her sexuality and working through childhood traumas. A woman can be very happily married to an intelligent university teacher. But if in her youth her mother forbade her to meet with a dangerous biker, becoming an adult, she can find herself a lover who resembles him in order to close the gestalt and understand why then, many years ago, she needed just such a man.
- In 2013, a British-American group of scientists published the results of a study in which it turned out that people cheat also because they enjoy not even sex or flirting with another person, but from violating moral norms. Many of us like to feel “wrong,” and cheating is just one way to show others our strength and insolence.
- Historians also deal with the problems of cheating. Until about the 19th century, monogamous marriage was a social and extremely pragmatic act. It was easier to run a household with a large family than it was alone, and gene transfer was considered almost sacred. Now the role of marriage has changed: every year we become more and more economically independent, and in a partner we are looking for a person who will become our friend, lover, travel companion - anyone. As a result, we change because we simply have the opportunity to look for a suitable pair even for the rest of our lives.
How to live with it
Does this mean that we are doomed to change? Yes and no. On the one hand, in marriage, there can really be a desire to change. On the other hand, if you understand yourself and your relationship with your partner, the risk of cheating or the need for it becomes lower.
Situation. Many people expect that the romance, passion, and surprises that started a relationship will definitely continue in marriage. When that doesn't happen, they look for thrills on the side.
How to avoid cheating.“I would try to find out how the spouses feel in their real, living relationship at this stage,” says Alla Solomatina, a practicing psychotherapist, candidate of psychological sciences. - What exactly is nostalgic for, looking back at the "candy-bouquet" period? It may well be that the fear of the routine of family life is behind the idealization of a beautiful beginning. The belief that there is no place for beauty, love, romance in her at all. Often, following their tired mothers, grandmothers who heroically survived alone, sad or drinking fathers, people carry a deep, destructive program: a family is a duty, it is work. And a life with pleasure, joyful idleness, the shown sex appeal of spouses is a sin and a shame. Recognizing these inner prohibitions releases passion, romance, and the joy of endlessly getting to know each other."
Situation. A child appeared in the family, and the woman devotes all her time to him. As a result, the man cheats in order to get the attention that he lacks in the family.
How to avoid cheating. “Behind this scenario I see a distortion of the family system: the husband falls into an infantile state and a competing relationship with the baby for the mother's love, and the wife heroically assumes the role of an ideal, all-powerful Mother. It is very important for a woman to convey her real feelings to her husband: the feeling of endless responsibility for the baby's life, and fatigue, and the desire for support and comfort, and the need to trust the man. And to her husband - to share that he feels pushed into the background, that he misses caresses and tenderness, that sometimes he feels awkward and awkward with the baby. This is an extremely difficult, but very resourceful period in the life of a family, and having passed it sincerely and together, spouses can reach a very deep level of intimacy."
Situation. One partner is cheating because he wants to take revenge on the other for past grievances in this way: for indifference, for rudeness or for treason that he once committed.
How to avoid cheating. “Of course it is necessary to speak! Try to be heard and try to hear the other. To speak in the first person, not accusing ("You are like that, you are like that!"), But appealing to yourself: "I feel pain. I feel that I cannot cope" and so on. If a tangle of resentments has accumulated, then it is better to resort to the help of an intermediary - a psychotherapist. Treason out of a sense of revenge is a war in which there will be no winners, including among those who are drawn into this game."
Situation. Cheating is brought as a pattern from the parental family. The father got a mistress, for example, and the mother put up with this, and now the man believes that everything in his marriage should be arranged in the same way. Or a woman is cheating on her husband, because he does not fit the definition of an ideal man that her mother imposed on her, and, realizing that it will not work to change him, she finds a lover.
How to avoid cheating. “We all bring some scenarios from the family history of our parents and grandparents into partnerships. Including scenarios of betrayal. The challenge facing everyone who enters into a close relationship is to learn to live with your head. And with my heart. The patterns that are "embedded" in us lose their power as soon as we ask ourselves the question: "Do I really think so? Do I really want this or is it accepted? Is this my (our) decision or a greeting from the past?" Very different life priorities helped our grandparents survive. But if now they are not adequate to our culture, our "I", our real relationships, our living feelings, they need to be realized and say goodbye to them like old clothes."
The psychology of infidelity
According to Alla Solomatina, in order to understand the true reasons for treason, it is important to realize at least two aspects of the relationship of partners: first, what each person in a pair actually feels (both in specific situations and in general), and secondly, how partners deal with these feelings.
“Often, even loving spouses do not notice each other's real feelings,” says Alla. - For example, in psychotherapeutic work with a married couple who have lived in love for many years, it suddenly turns out that behind the joint image "we are cool hikers", the wife has long accumulated fatigue and irritation for the discomfort from such a rest. But she cannot admit this even to herself, because for her and her husband it would mean "growing old in spirit." The psychotherapist has to "amplify" the voice of the partner, which in everyday life sounds quieter.
There is an example of a more serious situation regarding sexual relations. Once a man made a rude joke in an intimate moment. The woman heard disappointment in her attractiveness in this joke, and this was superimposed on her own complexes. As a result, she began to avoid intimacy. Further - more: the man felt rejected and ceased to be active. If this chain of thinking and resentment had not been interrupted by a frank conversation, one of the spouses might well have broken down and tried to find their happiness with someone else.
The most important thing is to understand how or who each partner feels in a pair. We are talking about a stable feeling that can accompany the entire life of a partner and manifest itself in various significant situations. For example, someone all the time feels that they do not meet the high requirements of a spouse. Some, on the contrary, are always disappointed and dissatisfied. Someone is forced to simplify themselves, and someone puffs up in order to seem more interesting. Someone is always right, and someone is "a fool and a fool."
There are a lot of options for such patterns and the reasons for their occurrence, but sooner or later a one-sided, limited feeling of oneself by each of the partners will accumulate and lead to a crisis in relations. What to do with this crisis: turn away from your partner and try to find "new happiness" on the side, get this joy and integrity with another, or still try to break through to each other - to a real, non-contrived, alive and unique person - and, in a happy case, grow up in a relationship together? This is the point of choice for each pair.”>