Infidelity: When to Stay or Go? The Dr. Weighs In

Most of us have had to deal with infidelity at some point in our lives. Sometimes, but not always cheating leads to the end of the relationship. My guest today, Dr. Alsaleem The Father of Modern Infidelity Counseling helps listeners better understand how to know when to stay and when to leave after your partner cheats.

Subscribe to my e-newsletter: https://she-explores-life.ck.page/e9760c390c
Ask a question, Leave a Comment: https://www.speakpipe.com/LockerRoomTalkPodcast

Find Dr. Alsaleem YT: @theinfidelitydoctor

Funfactory.com has partnered with Locker Room Talk & Shots so when you use my special code SELS20, you get 20% off your fun factory purchase. Just head to https://us.funfactory.com/and use my code SELS20 at check out for 20% off sex toys, lube massage oils, and more

Get 20% off all Fun Factory Products when you use my code SELS20
funfactory.com: https://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=1038109&m=117851&u=2029266

15% off Womanizer products with code EXPLORES15
Womanizer.com: https://womanizer-north-america.sjv.io/y2xNQN

Use Code EXPLORES30 for 30% off TheThruster.com, Lacier.com & Botiquevoila.com
thethruster.com: https://bit.ly/3Xsj5wY
lacier.com: https://bit.ly/3pVR3Or
boutiquevoila.com: https://bit.ly/3KcngYw

Get 15% off lingerie, sex toys, and body products when you shop Lovehoney.com and use code EXPLORES15

Lovehoney: https://lovehoneyus.sjv.io/rQ15ZR

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Do the sex Think fun, honest and feminist as fuck, and always with the goal of fighting the patriarchy. One female orgasm at a time. Welcome to the locker room.

Speaker 3: 1:08

Today's locker Talk and Shots topic is infidelity how to know when to stay and when to go. Folks, you know it is my goal to help everybody have better relationships and intimate relationships, and I know almost all of us have experienced infidelity at some point in our lives. And I think one of the biggest questions we all ask ourselves in that situation is like how do I know when to call it? How do I know when to work on it? Can I work my way through it? Well, fortunately today I am no expert on that.

Speaker 3: 1:42

My guest today is an expert. I have Dr Talal here. He is a renowned relationship expert and author of the groundbreaking book Unfaithful and Unrepentant Affairs Beyond Hope of Repair. Dr Talal is held as the father of modern infidelity counseling and his expertise extends beyond the pages of the book as he is the founder of the Infidelity Counseling Center and the creator of Systematic Affair Recovery Therapy. Dr Talal, I'm so happy to have you here today. I'm excited about this conversation and getting some answers that even I have searched for at some point in my relationship experience. But can you take a moment just to tell my listeners a little bit more about you?

Speaker 2: 2:32

Well, thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. I'm looking forward to share my knowledge and skill set with your listeners. So my name is Dr Tal Al-Saleem and, as you have mentioned, I'm the creator of Systematic Hyper Recovery and the founder of the Infidelity Counseling Center. So I'm a clinician and a researcher, and my passion is infidelity. My passion is understanding why it happened, the struggles that couples go through in order for them to overcome it, and also how to prevent it in your relationship.

Speaker 3: 2:59

By the end of this podcast you're going to have some questions answered and maybe some approaches to recovering from it, but also when to know, when the relationship might just not be the relationship for you. Let's get ready to talk about relationships, affairs and how to like heal Cheers.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Cheers.

Speaker 3: 3:22

I want to just start with what are some common misconceptions about affairs, and how and why they happen.

Speaker 2: 3:32

Well, the main misconception about infidelity is why infidelity happened. If you ask the average person, or even the average clinician, why does infidelity happen? Most people would say infidelity happened because people are not happy with their partner or relationship dissatisfaction. Now, granted, relationship dissatisfaction is one of the leading causes of infidelity, but it's not the only one. Sometimes infidelity has nothing to do with the relationship satisfaction. Sometimes it's an individual issue that the unfaithful partner struggle with something that they had prior to even entering the relationship. A common individual factor that could lead to infidelity is folks with personality disorders, somebody who struggle with narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and also people who struggle with sex addiction, pornography addiction, substance abuse, even untreated past trauma. So there are a lot of individual factors that causes infidelity.

Speaker 2: 4:29

In addition to the individual factors that causes infidelity and the relationship dissatisfaction factors that lead to infidelity, there are also environmental factors that lead to infidelity, and the best example I usually give for people to wrap their mind around the environments that we put ourselves in has a big influence in terms of how we conceptualize a relationship. So a good example of this cultural norms. We all belong to different types of macro cultures, like ethnicity, religion, nationality, and we also belong to micro cultures, which is like your family of origin, and each cultural group that you belong to, it has its own cultural norms. So if you are part of a cultural group macro or micro and part of that norms is infidelity like infidelity is seen as a behavior where it's encouraged or it's not frowned upon, or if it's seen as a sign of masculinity, then you're more likely going to engage in this behavior simply because it's not a big deal. You are socialized to see this as something that is normal.

Speaker 2: 5:33

That's why it's really important as a clinician, when you're trying to understand why infidelity happens, not just to simply focus on relationship dissatisfaction. So the first thing that I do before I work with my clients, I get a lot of history. I ask them about their history of the relationship that they're in currently. How did they start? How we got here? I ask them about their history of the relationship that they're in currently. How did they start? How we got here? I asked them about their past relationship history and the kind of experiences that we're exposed to, as well as a little bit about their family origin, because you're going to use that information to make a better interpretation of the story of the infidelity so that you can actually capture all the reasons that led to it.

Speaker 3: 6:07

Do you think it's important, in order to heal a relationship, to know the origin of the reason for the infidelity? Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 6:19

It is crucial because I see it as a cause and effect right, because if the goal is to prevent infidelity from happening again, whether in this relationship or future relationship, because not everybody's going to be staying together we need to understand why this happened, because if we don't understand the why, we're not going to be able to make sure that it's not going to happen again.

Speaker 2: 6:40

But also, if I'm the betrayed partner and I'm actually considering fixing this relationship, how do I know this won't happen again? Well, you know this won't happen again if you truly understand what exactly happened, why it happened, and seeing actual evidence of those issues being fixed. Anything short of that is just wishful thinking. And this actually lead to another myth that people have about infidelity and infidelity recovery, which is that the only solution for infidelity recovery is to work with the relationship and save it. Well, that's not an attainable option for everyone. The goal of infidelity recovery is to give the couple the opportunity to understand what happened, why it happened, assess the damage and figure out what's the best way to heal from this. So it's a catalyst for change. It could lead to repairing the relationship and make it better and stronger than it was prior, or it could be a sign that this is the time for you to leave this relationship, the relationship that you should have left a long time ago.

Speaker 3: 7:35

It sounds like what you're saying is a different way of looking at recovering from an affair isn't necessarily bringing the relationship back together, but going through this process of healing with you. That at the very least especially for the person who was cheated on if they leave the relationship, they can do it having felt somewhat healed from it. So it's not, you know, like you just leave and you're angry and you've cheated on me, fuck you. You walk out the door and then you're stuck with unresolved understanding of what happened and carrying that trauma with you.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Absolutely, because I really feel like infidelity doesn't happen in a vacuum. Everything we do, good or bad, we do it for a reason, even the awful choice to engage in infidelity behavior. So if you just decide to be upset and hurt, as you legitimately should, when you're betrayed and you walk away without a true understanding, you didn't really do this properly right, because what is the reason that you end up in this situation is not being clear about what you want and how to screen for partners. Don't you want to learn from that opportunity so that you don't find yourself in that position again? To learn from that opportunity so that you don't find yourself in that position again?

Speaker 2: 8:52

The interesting part about this is that sometimes people confuse getting clarity about why this happened, especially if we're dealing with a relationship deficit. It almost seems like sometimes the betrayed feel like well, are you blaming me for why I got cheated on? And I always say that the unfaithful partner is 100% responsible for the choices that they have made. I have been doing this for many, many years and I have seen you know as many manifestations of infidelity why it happened as you can imagine. I have yet to get to come across situation where I can say, yeah, this was the betrayed fault. Because even if you have a partner who is the worst partner in the universe, right, they're not meeting your needs. And then they have choices. You can drag them to counseling to fix those issues, or you can leave before cheating.

Speaker 3: 9:41

So cheating is a choice that people unfortunately make for a problem that actually has a solution. Do you think that certain people tend to seek out the type of person who cheats? Because we're talking about not having healed from one person cheating on you and just kind of leaving, not having learned how? Maybe you're not screening or maybe you're just drawn to personality types that tend towards cheating.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Great question. So a common factor that lead to infidelity is lack of relationship maturity. What do I mean by relationship maturity? Relationship maturity is the skill set that one should have to help them look for a healthy relationship, start a healthy relationship and maintain a healthy relationship. Well, how do people get relationship maturity?

Speaker 2: 10:27

There's two main sources. One is the model that was exposed to you in your family of origin, in your family and unfortunately, not everybody's going to have a good, healthy model in their family. I would say most people. They don't have the best models and they try to do the best that they can to learn from that. So if you grew up in a family where you know the relationship that was exposed to you is just something awful, you know people cannot communicate clearly, there was infidelity, there was other dysfunctions, that's all you're going to know about what relationship, what the relationship is supposed to be like.

Speaker 2: 11:02

The other source of relationship maturity is the type of relationship experiences people have before their current relationship. So if all the relationship that you had from the beginning were abusive, dysfunctional, guess what? You're going to carry all that mess with you in any new relationship that you start. So if you're lacking relationship maturity, you might not be equipped in terms of knowing who you are, who's a compatible partner, what reflects that you look for. You might have a self-worth, self-esteem issue. You might think that you have to settle this the best that you can, and you know you end up in those situations. Another common reason that related to relationship maturity is how people start relationship. You know, I think you need infatuation at least to make a connection with someone. But infatuation by itself doesn't mean anything. It does not last right. So people really need to take the time before they escalate to continue the relationship. Other than like, other than I, like you and you make my you know heartstrings flutter. That has to be more to a thumb up.

Speaker 3: 12:02

Do you find that, at least in your experience and your knowledge, that people who cheat tend to do that repeatedly in all of their relationships?

Speaker 2: 12:14

That the ones that cheat are always a cheater.

Speaker 3: 12:16

Yeah, is there truth to that?

Speaker 2: 12:19

There is some validity to that and what I have seen that being an issue is when the infidelity was caused by an individual factor. That's not a relationship deficit and oftentimes it's the folks who are dealing with personality disorders. Why is this a struggle for them? Because personality disorder in general, they're very resistant to treatment. They're not impossible to fix but they're very challenging to fix. And why is that? Because somebody with personality disorder especially if you're dealing with cluster B, narcissism and antisocial personality disorders they don't have any clinical distress, they're A okay with who they are. Their problem is that the world is not being on the same page, so they're not going to be very motivated to make those changes. They're going to be looking for people who they can bend to their will to continue living the way they want to live. So I've seen it in those situations where it's challenging for them to actually prevent relapse.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Another version of this is that when you have people who are just not compatible, right, like the relationship happened because of incompatibility, well, incompatibility is not going to go away, even if you go through counseling and you understand why this happened. If you're too incompatible and there's no room for compromises, the pattern is going to repeat itself, maybe not necessarily infidelity, but it would be a different disruption because if you have people who are vastly incompatible, they're not going to get their needs met in the relationship. I give the example if you have one member of the couple who is on the extreme end of the kink pole and somebody and other partners in the extreme end of vanilla, they're going to struggle. There's not much room for compromise.

Speaker 3: 13:51

Sexual incompatibilities. I've often wondered and I have found for myself. When I am in the place of seeking out a partner, I know for myself like intimacy is really important and being on the same page with that. How often does sexual incompatibility play into infidelity?

Speaker 2: 14:11

Quite often this is actually one of the more popular relationship factors that lead to infidelity. And this goes back to the idea of you know how people start relationship. If you just see somebody that you like and you know you're in the you know new relationship energy phase and you ignore the actual signs of incompatibility. You know people usually like you know they escalate their commitment, they get married or they have a child or adopt a child, and now you're stuck right and then it becomes an escalation of commitment type of scenario where well, I'm ready here, can we make this work? And people confuse sacrifice with compromise, and a lot of people don't like hearing when I say this, but I'm not here to make friends.

Speaker 2: 14:50

We're socialized to think that sacrifices are a good thing. Sacrifices are a bad thing, especially for a relationship, because when you're doing a sacrifice, one part of the couple is going without Now and you may think that they're actually compromising, when in reality they're doing a sacrifice, which means that what You're signing a blank check that they're actually compromising, when in reality they're doing a sacrifice, which means that what you're signing, a blank check that they're expecting you to reciprocate at some point of time down the road. Because if I gave this up for you, you're gonna have to give up something for me, and it's not sustainable because it always leads to resentment, especially if the other person does not reciprocate that sacrifice. Compromise is really the healthy option, because if you're doing a solid compromise, then I get 80 of what I want, get 80% of what you want and whatever we miss out it's cancel each other out. At least we get a portion of what we're hoping to get in terms of an outcome related to whatever it is that we haven't compromised about.

Speaker 3: 15:42

How would someone know the difference between compromise and sacrifice?

Speaker 2: 15:47

It seems very subtle compromise and sacrifice like seems very subtle. It it is. It is nuance, right? So if I'm consistently giving up, all, right, or you know very close to it, that's a problem. I should not be, you know, giving up all just to meet you somewhere in the middle. There should be something else that you're doing on your end to meet me halfway. So if we're like building a bridge, right, you know. If I'm coming all the way here to you, right, and you're not moving, then guess what? That's a sacrifice? But the compromise.

Speaker 2: 16:14

We're both taking steps to find this healthy aspect, but also being able to talk about these things, because sometimes a person might be sacrificing something and for them it's really meaningful and important, and the other person think, okay, well, that's not a big deal for them.

Speaker 2: 16:28

You, I don't know if I don't know you're sacrificing. I think that you're just doing this because you want to right and that the sacrifice that you have made is not going to have that impact, because I'm thinking, like you know that this is not a big deal for you. You don't have any, uh, any problem with agreeing with me on that issue. So that also part of it, too, has to do when we have a conversation to people understand I'm giving that up for you and if they actually understand that, are they OK with that Right? So if I, if I, love you and cared about you, why would I be consistently OK with you not having what you want? That's a problem. That means that I'm really caring about me and my needs and don't care about you and the sticker price of that you being sad.

Speaker 3: 17:12

Right, right. So we've just talked about a lot of things that lead to or help lead to an affair, but can we talk about the, the concept of affairs beyond repair, and why so? Are these reasons why relationships end up in that bucket? Because there's two buckets basically right Affairs that you can heal from, and then the ones that are beyond repair, and I think people oftentimes get stuck in this place of like how do I know where this really is? Because no one wants to like go. I'm going to keep working on it and then go back into being cheated on again or to be in a relationship where you constantly are worried about. Is the person being honest with me? Are they telling me all you know?

Speaker 2: 17:57

that that's a great question. So the best way to talk about this is kind of actually, the two different books that I have written will help kind of draw that parallel. So the first book was infidelity the best, worst thing that coulden to your Marriage and that book was designed to help people understand what is infidelity. What does infidelity mean Because sometimes people are not even on the same page on what constitutes infidelity or not right. But also, in addition to what is infidelity is, why does it happen and what are the steps that you need to go through in order for you to get to that point. So the book is designed to outline the milestones of recovery that every couple have to go through to get to that point of that decision. So the successes and failure in completing those milestones is going to determine what kind of outcome that they're going to have.

Speaker 2: 18:42

The second book is Unfaithful and Unrepentant Affairs Beyond the Hope of Repair, and that book is designed to show the cases and the archetypes of unfaithful partners that makes it difficult to repair the relationship and heal that way and heal that way, and this has to do with the specific archetypes that they belong to as well as how this archetype is going to actually stop them from completing the milestones of recovery successfully. So we don't have the time to talk about all the different milestones of recovery, but I'm going to share the primary ones and we can demonstrate a parallel in terms of how does this lead to a failure in the relationship. So the first important milestone of recovery is getting the story of the infidelity. Why is that important? Because if we don't understand what happened and why it happened, we don't know if this is something that we both want to work on. The second important milestone of recovery is acknowledging the impact. This is the opportunity for the unfaithful to see if they can actually demonstrate the damage that they have caused by their action, not just on the intellectual level, but also do they have the right feelings that we expect them to have? Why is this important? Well, because of the trade. Why do I want to rebuild with somebody who doesn't get it, or somebody who actually get it and doesn't feel bad about it? Because at that point of time, you're dealing with somebody who is sociopathic, who doesn't really care about your feeling.

Speaker 2: 20:06

The last important milestone in the recovery process is implementing the action plan. So if you help a couple understand the what and the why and you outline the reasons that led to it and you actually show them the tools. Here's the way to actually fix those reasons. You need to have a commitment to change. So if the unfaithful partner is unwilling to actually follow through with those changes, then that's going to lead to a dead end, right? Because it's a setup for relapse if you don't do the work to fix the reason why this happened.

Speaker 2: 20:37

So if we're highlighting these three milestones, getting the story, acknowledging the impact and implementing the action plan, we'll have to take a look on the other side of unfaithful and repentant. So if your unfaithful partner is unrepentant, they're not going to be a good candidate for you to repair the relationship. But what does unrepentance mean? A lot of times we use this with a religious connotation.

Speaker 2: 21:02

Repentance is not for just somebody who has a belief, a spiritual belief system. It's something everybody needs Diagnostic, atheist, it's a clinical concept and really, for me, if you break down repentance with the milestones of recovery, you're going to see a parallel. So what are the three elements of repentance? We have confession, contrition and commitment to change. The confession is giving me the story of why this happened. The contrition is showing me that you actually feel that about what you did, commitment to change is your ability to implement the steps that we have agreed on to make sure this won't happen again. So that's you know. If you feel that your partner is an unrepentant in the way that I have described, they're known to be a good candidate for repairing the relationship, because you cannot fix a relationship without these elements.

Speaker 3: 21:54

Yeah, and I think it's interesting too when you talk about repentant and feeling bad. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between someone who feels bad because they hurt you and someone who feels bad because they got caught and now their life is harder. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 22:16

Sure, and that's a big difference too. So that brings up another issue that sometimes people have a different opinion on, because, from the betrayed perspective, you're measuring the reaction that you're in a relationship uh, deficit that actually to infidelity, right, why I'm in the same relationship that you're in. If you're unhappy, I'm probably not happy either, right so? But you don't see me cheating, right? You don't see me acting on this unhappiness by cheating. But let's say I can imagine myself cheating on you. I would feel so much, I would deal with the discovery in a very different way than what you have dealing with me, because I'm trying to put myself in those shoes. And that's problematic because the unfaithful is a different person. So they, you know the way they react to trauma and discovery is going to be different than yours, but also their vantage point is different. The intensity is going to be different than what you're expecting, because they have the time to process their thoughts and feelings.

Speaker 2: 23:21

But also they're not looking at it from your perspective, because there's this common misconception. Go back to the conception again from the betrayed perspective, sometimes say well, you cheat on me because you don't love me or you don't respect me the situation where that is the case, but it's not the majority. A lot of times the unfaithful is not doing this because I want to hurt you. They're doing this because they think this is a solution for a problem that they have. The byproduct of that idiotic solution is that you hurt a lot of people around you. So it's not always that you know. I'm doing this because I don't respect you, I don't love you.

Speaker 2: 23:57

Sometimes it's actually a selfish act of love and that's also hard sell, because if you truly didn't want to be with your partner and just want to be single, go out, do whatever you want to do. Nobody's going to care. But sometimes people like their partner or like some aspect of their relationship that are working. They don't want to give up, but also they have this need that's not being fulfilled so selfishly. I want to keep you in my life and fulfill this need. Therefore, I'm going to cheat on you, because cheating on somebody requires time, effort and energy.

Speaker 3: 24:24

Right. I definitely have heard from a lot of people across my life in my life who have cheated. They've said it's usually been around intimacy and sexuality and sex where they don't feel fulfilled. But maybe they're so invested, they have children or they have a home together or they have assets and they actually like their partner. And so their mindset is I'm going out and getting this need fulfilled because you don't want to like they've already had the conversation with their partner of like I have these needs and their partners like I don't want to do that and they're like well, I'm going to go get this need filled out here so I can stay here in this relationship. So it's almost like they feel like they're doing everybody a favor while getting their needs met.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Absolutely, and then it's a faulty kind of reasoning. But it's very common and my rebuttal on these things that's fine. If that's what you want to do it's not a unilateral decision Then tell your partner hey, I asked you about this. This is really important for me. Either you can or won't do it, or a combination of both. This is an important need for me. Are you okay with me outsourcing this for somebody else? Do we want to change the relationship contract and make it less exclusive, whether sexually or emotionally? If your partner is on board with that, before you act, more power to you. But you cannot just make that decision on your own right. If it's your own company, then sure, but it's a partnership. You don't get to make that decision on your own. You have to involve your partner on that.

Speaker 3: 26:37

Can you tell me about archetypes a little bit? What does that mean?

Speaker 2: 26:45

the archetypes of people who have affairs. So the archetypes are, for the unfaithful and repentant partners, archetypes, and there are nine archetypes of unrepentant and faithful partners. The one I will share is the most common one, that for people to kind of wrap their mind around. The most common one in the unfaithful and repentant archetype is the disparate and the disparate unfaithful archetype is the disparate and the disparate unfaithful partner. This is the type of partner that we just talked about, the one who have a significant relationship deficit, whether on the emotional level or the sexual level. They talk to their partner about it a million times before right, but despite their effort is not being met. So finally they make the decision you know, if you don't, if you're not going to do this, I'm going to find that somewhere else. Why is it difficult for these folks to repair their relationship? Because when the discovery happened, when it comes to telling the story, they either you know minimize what happened to an extreme or they are very, very blunt about where they're telling you why it happened because they want to hurt you. They want to tell you how is the other person is better than you are right. So what? What? Whether they are over exaggerating the story or they're withholding because they don't care, because they're going to go anyway. Right, that's a problem, because if you don't do the story part properly, you cannot move to the next step. So that's one area where it's going to be challenging. Another area of challenge is their motivation for treatment. You're having somebody who's already checked out, like the reason that they are and faithful because they're checked out. So you have one person here that betrayed, who probably still think that this is going to go. They want to work on the relationship and then faithful is just really, I'm not here to I lost interest. So you have two people with one person who really wanted to work on the person who's completely out of the picture. But also, when it comes to acknowledging the impact, they're not going to be feeling bad about what they're doing because, from their vantage point, it's your fault. I cheated, I don't want to cheat on you, you forced me to cheat, which means that the betrayed partner you're put in a position where you have to feel like the bad guy or suppress your own feeling right and actually ask this person who cheated on you to give you a chance. That's problematic. That's a hard sell. How can you fix a relationship when the unfaithful is not actually is giving you the acknowledgement that they should have. And also, when we talk about, let's say that they actually go through the steps and give you the story and they're successful in acknowledging the impact, which they struggle in doing so. But if they just jump through the hoops just to showcase that they're doing the right thing and you get to the action, they're not going to actually be willing to make those changes. They're going to be blocking any attempts for repair because from their vantage point it's a little too late right Now. You want me after. I actually went on the other side and found what I was looking for. So that's a common one when it comes to non-faithful and repentant.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Another interesting one I have seen is the mortal archetype when you are confronted with your own mortality. When people are confronted with, life is fleeting. I mean, we all know we're going to die, but when you come across an event, whether it's a cancer scare, let's say, or somebody close to you die unexpectedly, for a lot of people that can actually be a major event that makes them question whether or not they want to be in this relationship right? So all of a sudden they have the sticking clock. I'm unhappy, whether because of individual reason, reason or the relationship, or maybe I didn't experiment enough and now, all of a sudden, I'm going to be living my life to the max because, you know, I think I only have so many months or years to live. That's also an interesting one to see. Why is this a challenging one to fix? Because you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have the time to do counseling, because if I think I'm going to die, whether it's because there is an actual pending time or I think just life is fleeting, I'm not going to waste any time in counseling, because I'm just going to live life to the fullest. I don't care about what's going on with you right now. But also they're going to be struggling in taking the steps needed to repair the damage that they have caused by the infidelity, because they are still preoccupied with how much time that they have left.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Another common archetype is the lovesick. These are the people who think they are falling in love with their fair partner, and it's interesting to say this because I really believe affairs are not a real relationship. They're relationship proxy. It's a cut out of our relationship. So whoever you interact with in an affair, you're not really seeing the full version of it.

Speaker 2: 31:24

Anybody can be the best lover, the best listener, the best partner in an affair, because it's a one dimensional relationship. So a lot of times sometimes people feel like, no, I love this person. So, even though you caught me, I'm sorry about what I did, but I want to keep this person in my life. I want to keep the third party in my life. So I might be pitching to you can we reopen our marriage now? And that Right, and that's that will lead to all different dysfunction, because if you signed up for monogamy and you change it for the wrong reason, you're going to be dealing with resentment or a different version of this. I don't want to keep the fair partner as a lover, but can I still be friends with them because they're important in my life? Well, that's. You cannot expect the betrayed to be okay with that, because that will always reopen that door and you're dealing with infidelity again.

Speaker 2: 32:10

So these are three of the nine archetypes, and the rest can be discussed in more detail.

Speaker 3: 32:20

Right, right, that makes sense listening ear when you're having problems in your relationship and you know, dote on you and tell you how wonderful you are during those times. But then when you end up in a relationship with the affair person, you're like, oh, and here's the whole person, not just the like good listener, the one who says all the things that make you feel good about, like, whatever you're doing in the moment. I have two more questions. One that I think is important and is a little bit going backward in our conversation, but something that's important to address. You mentioned earlier that sometimes, like, people don't even know, like, where the cheating starts, in that two people might define cheating differently.

Speaker 3: 33:09

I've talked about it on this podcast a lot. Some people define cheating as catching their partner watching porn or just chatting with another person. Or you can talk about, like, emotional affairs. When does that begin, when does it not? The definition of infidelity can really vary vastly. Like my definition of what I would consider cheating in a relationship is, I guess, would be probably fairly different than what someone who like if they find their partner like looking at a sexy magazine, like I'm in a very different world and mindset. How do you speak to that. I mean that seems like a big problem.

Speaker 2: 33:50

That is so. This was actually the first puzzle that I had to solve, right? Because when you look at the literature, you know, for clinicians and researchers are trying to define infidelity. Even clinicians cannot agree what's an operational definition for infidelity, which means that any studies that we have to see about infidelity, we have to take it with a grain of salt because it depends on how the researcher have defined it, which is mind boggling for me. But also, I need a definition that will work for all the different types of clients that I work with, from all the type of relationships that practice, from all the different worldview views and the spiritual, cultural views that they bring in. And I also want a definition that put a moral buffer between me, as Talal, and my clients, because your job as a therapist this is, whether you like it or not, as a therapist, your job is to make a calling. Is this infidelity or not? They're coming to you to make a ruling on this one. So you cannot afford to be Switzerland, but when you make a calling on this one, you cannot make that calling based on. This is what Talal think. This is what Talal as a person you know. I cannot impose my personal view on fidelity on you, because I might be in a completely different relationship than you are. So I need to come up with a definition that capture all of these things, because that is the first step in the recovery process. What are we going to call this problem? Because if one person calls it infidelity, another person said well, I was just being silly or just being stupid. Now we cannot move the ball forward. We have to agree is it infidelity? Is it not infidelity, so that we can deal with it appropriately. So here's the definition that I came up with.

Speaker 2: 36:08

I believe that relationships should operate as a business partnership, which means that we have to have a contract for this relationship. How many partners we have in this relationship? Is it one, is it two, is it 20? What are the emotional and sexual needs that we're expecting to be fulfilled by the partners we have in this relationship, and to what extent the fulfillment of those needs is exclusive to me and you and you know, and the partners who are in this partnership. The moment one of the partners outsource the fulfillment of those needs emotional or sexual to somebody else other than the people who are supposed to be in this relationship without consent, I'm breaching my contract of exclusivity. So the breach of contract of exclusivity is the threshold, I don't care how big or small it is. If we're able to establish that, then we're dealing with infidelity and the story.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Wow, that's amazing that actually you need to put a contract together. People can fill out, like honestly, that is amazing. And I love how it's inclusive of non monogamous or poly relationships as well.

Speaker 2: 37:15

It's inclusive of non-monogamous or poly relationships as well, because that's the challenge too. Because you know when I, when I started, you know, working with poly couples and realizing the like, the pre-existing models that we have, it does not give them a pathway to address those issues. Those guys deal with infidelity too. It just looks different in their situation. So, and common justification people have. You know well, if it's virtual, does it count? To me, really, the virtual world versus the real world, they're no different.

Speaker 2: 37:41

Whatever exclusivity that you expect, it is the same parameters, unless somehow you as a couple or a triad, you decide that it's okay to do this or not. But what you said is actually very important. There was a recent study that says, I think at least 45% of couples never take the time to actually talk about the exclusivity and the needs that they don't have a relationship contract, right, whether verbally or in writing, and they only talk about it after something happened. Was a little too late, right? So prevention is key. And then again, like it doesn't have to be an actual urgent contract, but it wouldn't be nice, but at least at a verbal level you should be able to say, hey, here's what I'm okay with and he's not okay with, prior to escalating your commitment, because that's when you know what he's from well, I love how you addressed like all of the aspects like what are we expecting our partners to do for us?

Speaker 3: 38:39

What's our exchange emotionally, sexually I mean recreationally and then what can be outsourced. I don't think we think about that or like definitely verbally agree on it. I think in my case, in my last relationship, something I really learned and I think if I were to ever enter a committed relationship again, I'm still up in the air on that one Um, I really had to get to the point where I was writing things. I was like I feel like I'm saying this, you're hearing this, because oftentimes we do hear things differently. Like I say I want XYZ and the other person is hearing like a version of that. That I'm like how did you hear that out of what I said? Communication can be really difficult when it comes to like emotions and love and sexuality and all of that stuff you know.

Speaker 2: 39:33

I'm glad you shared that. There's two things that brought up to me. One is related to you know the difficulty people have in terms of having these conversations right. So part of it is again, if you don't like, you only know what you know right. So if you don't have the skill sets, it's going to be a moot point.

Speaker 2: 39:49

But I think sometimes people struggle with the idea like, what is the purpose of relationship? And I'm not saying this to be cold hearted, but relationships are built on need, fulfillment, reciprocity. We all can live by ourselves. I can live alone and fulfill the majority of my need to some extent. That becomes a quality of life. Can I survive on tofu every day? Sure, but would I enjoy having varieties? So the same thing, I can live by myself and fulfill my own needs, but life is more fulfilling when you have a partner to help fulfill some of those needs. So sometimes people I think they're just sensitive to this idea of like well, no, I'm here because I love you and I'm like well, yes, that's part of it, but also you're expecting me to fulfill some of those needs. So be accepting that fact. That should help with that obstacle.

Speaker 2: 40:36

But the other piece that you talked about related to communication, communication and conflict resolution. The lack of those skills is one of the common relationship factors that lead to infidelity, because if you're not able to express your needs, or you know your needs and you're poorly expressing them, you're going to end up with relationship deficit, and that I've seen. Actually, you know common factors that people struggle with if they don't have the proper communication, conflict resolution skills, and I always encourage my, even in my session, like when one partner is saying something before the other person answer. Well, I say, okay, first of all, tell me, what did you hear them say? Right, because if you hear them wrong, then guess what? All this time we're spending afterwards we're talking about two different things, because not everything that you say is going to be heard exactly how you intended.

Speaker 3: 41:23

All right. So what are for listeners? Can you give me telltale signs If someone is listening right now? Here are some just really obvious signs that repair probably isn't going to happen after an affair.

Speaker 2: 41:41

Perfect. So first sign is how much of a struggle for the unfaithful to actually admit that this is infidelity. Now, granted everything that I'm going to say oftentimes there is a struggle in these areas as how much of a pushback that you're getting right, not just the fact that you're getting a pushback.

Speaker 2: 42:00

So if you're, having somebody who just really willingly ignoring that what they did as a form of infidelity, even though you can demonstrate that it meets the threshold of exclusivity, that's a problem, because why would you want to work, why would you work with somebody who's not even able to admit that we have a problem or we have a different kind of problem. So that's one. Two if, after the discovery, you feel that the truth is being trickled by a dropper, right, despite the chances that they were given, you're signing up for a whole long life of trauma. Right, because you'd be like, you know, every few weeks or a month you have a new discovery and you're just like traumatized over and over again and you can only break the heart so many times before you're able to put it back together again. So that's also a sign in terms of how much dishonesty that you're dealing with. And are they willing to actually be come clean about what happened at some point in time? Uh, if they are uh not able to get the damage that they have caused on the intellectual level, or they do so but they don't have those feelings of guilt, remorse, that's also set up for failure. Because you know, like, why would I rebuild with somebody who is not even feeling remorseful for something that they should feel remorseful for, and also the one who actually wants you to keep the door open to the third party.

Speaker 2: 44:10

That one's tricky In a perfect world after infidelity. I always recommend, if you're able to untangle your life and never, ever see the third party ever again, that's what I recommend. But it's not a perfect world. Most people have infidelity with somebody at the workplace, which means that you know you can't just quit your job the next day just to not be with the third party. So I'm okay with saying you know, I still have to have some kind of interaction with the third party, as long as those interactions are a have to versus I choose to, and as long as we have an exit strategy and as long as we're actually being transparent about those interactions so that if I'm the betrayed I'm not worried so much as this door going to be reopened again. But you have to come up with an exit strategy because you cannot expect the betrayed to trust you if the third party is still in your life. So these are the main ones that I recommend, but of course there is more, but this is just kind of like the highlights.

Speaker 3: 45:05

Kind of the things to start checking in on with yourself. Follow up question If you meet someone and you're getting to know them and you're you know you like them and you find out they have a history of having an affair or affairs cheating, because that's always a question that comes up in the I think you mentioned a little bit before people having, when it came to relationship maturity, having the skills to screen properly for partners. Sure, what would you say about that? How do you know when that comes up it's not a glaring red flag in a new partner?

Speaker 2: 45:46

I think accepting the fact that people of all kinds of relationship and all different backgrounds make mistakes. So just because somebody made a mistake of the awful act of intrudelity does not mean they're not redeemable. I would ask them you know why did this happen, right? Did you actually do the time and effort to figure this out? If I said no, I didn't, that might be a problem, right? Because you should know at some point, regardless of your state of relief. Is you know why did this happen? How do you know it's not going to happen again? So I think it should lead to a conversation about really getting more information about the trajectory to that caveat. You know how honest this person is going to be. Are they going to be one sided? Are they going to only tell you their version of the story? I think we all have blinders. We're tied to our own subjective perception. But I think if you can ask?

Speaker 2: 46:34

them. So you know, this is your side. What do you think your side, what? But I think, if you can ask them. So this is your side, what do you think your side? What do you think your partner's side of this? If they're not even able to articulate that, then that's a problem too right.

Speaker 2: 46:48

So I think just accepting that just because somebody was unfaithful doesn't mean that they aren't redeemable, and just really getting a better understanding of their side of the story, as well as what they might share with you in terms of what their partner has said or shared, and making that assessment for yourself, because sometimes let's say that the person cheated because there was an incompatibility, that doesn't mean they're going to repeat this again, because now you assess did we do this? Are we compatible? Or if I told you that the relationship ended because we could not communicate and have conflict resolution effectively, is this still a problem for you before I actually invented this relationship? So either way you look at it is about them taking the time and effort to understand what they did, why they did it, and are they able to share that with you so that you can make an informed decision? Are those causes still a problem or not?

Speaker 3: 47:34

Thank you, that's insightful. And one final question they keep coming up in my mind, as we have because this is such a big topic, happens to so many of us what do you know the stats? Are men more likely to cheat than women? Are women? And I have to ask. I mean, my assumption is yes, but I don't know that in modern day dating that that's necessarily true anymore.

Speaker 2: 47:59

Great question. So you know that comes up often and I think part of us wants to to uh, part of it is related to this uh, archaic form of you know, uh, uh, men from Mars, women from Venus, type of thing. But that's the ability, the time that it changed, I do believe being a you know, being a man or being a woman and however that means to you, is important to a point. There's biological differences. There is sociological differences. To me, what I have seen consistently is that the reason why people cheat does not change in terms of the categories. It's individual factors, relationship factors and environmental factors, and whether you're a man, woman or somewhere in between, however you identify biologically or socially, it does not matter in that aspect, it matters in terms of which one of these ones was relevant to you. So I'm sure in some societies and cultural groups, one of or more of those individual relationship issues is more skewed or cited based if you're a man or a woman. But I don't think we should look at it that way, because even when you look at the literature, statistics change. We'll look at prevalence rate. You know who cheats more, men or women. There are some studies that says there are no differences whatsoever. There are some studies that says, you know, men's are three times more likely and there are one where it says, you know, based on the type of appearance people have. I have not yet to see consistent data in my work to say, well, men are more likely to cheat, or more likely to cheat. I think it impacts them differently.

Speaker 2: 49:30

Right, in terms of the recovery process, I can tell you that men and women and again, and this is with a very different variation of caveat of how people identify, uh conceptualize infidelity differently. Uh, most often men think about infidelity within the sexual realms, but when you ask women to conceptualize infidelity, they go beyond just, you know you're having sex with somebody they talk about. You know, hand holding, hugging, buying gifts, emotional. Uh, infidelity parameter seems to be more women oriented versus men oriented. So there are differences in how they conceptualize it.

Speaker 2: 50:06

But I but I don't think, you know, being one of the other is going to increases your likelihood for that, unless it's a socializing aspect. So, if we go with the environmental factor, if you're in a culture where being a guy having having sex outside of your marriage is seen as a cool thing it's not masculinity then you're probably going to be more likely to do this because you're seen as a cool person, if you're, you know, decided to tell you if you're a woman, you're not allowed to do this and if you're doing this, then you're somebody with those morals to be less likely to do this. So it has an impact and those trajectories. That makes sense.

Speaker 3: 50:39

Yes, yeah for sure, and I think historically women were likely to cheat less because the consequences were higher. Right, in some cultures you can be put to death, and in historically American culture I mean women only could have their own bank account starting in the 70s. So the risk of losing your partner came with heavier consequences. But now I think, as the playing field is slowly evening and women can support themselves and the consequences start to go down, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the rates and that's what I would put my money on.

Speaker 2: 51:17

right? If we live in a world where it's even and fair for both sexes and genders, right? I think it would become clear that this is no longer skewed because of these different socializing processes.

Speaker 3: 51:29

And do you have any stats on rates of recidivism? So someone has an affair, goes through therapy, does the healing. Do you know what the rates of people continuing that cycle are and how many people?

Speaker 2: 51:47

I think a lot of it has. Depends on which kind of therapy they got involved in and was the therapy effective? Because, believe it or not, despite how prevalent of a problem it is, up until I developed my model, there wasn't a therapy model that was tailor-made for infidelity, so therapists were using general models which were not adequate. So it depends on which model that they're using. If you're looking at global level statistics, I would say over 30% of people managed to repair their relationship and stay healthy on the right path in comparison to others, and this is regardless of which modality of treatment that they're using. If I can tell in my data set of the couples that I work with using my model, I would say in the 70 and 80% actually end up the one who chose the path of recovery to actually stay on the right path and not repeat the acts of infidelity, and the 20% these are the ones who actually decided to, you know, move on and be single.

Speaker 2: 52:52

But the beauty about the process that I developed is that the goal is to help you figure out what you're going to do. Are you going to go this way, are you going to go that way? There are a lot of checks and balances, because for me, my job is to get you unstuck. My job is not to say you have to be in this relationship, because I know for a fact sometimes it's the right thing to walk away. Now it is not my job as a therapist to tell you you should stay. You get the information that you need, the advertisement that you need to go through so that you can make that decision for yourself I love that.

Speaker 3: 53:22

Thank you so much. I feel like you answered a lot of questions today. I feel like I learned a lot from this. Can you tell my uh listeners where to find all of your information, to get your books and all the stuff?

Speaker 2: 53:37

Excellent. So folks can find me on my main website, kalalalsaleemcom. It's a mouthful, but I'm sure you'll have a link. My books are available on Amazon and Audible. So this is infidelity the best, worst thing that could happen to your marriage, and this is unfaithful and a repentant affairs beyond the hope of repair. And you also can find me on YouTube. I have my YouTube channel, the infidelity doctor, and on that channel you'll see me answering a lot of Q and A's about infidelity preventions, as well as causes and struggles that people are dealing with. And also you will find a docu-series that I did with a couple. You'll see the process beginning and end, so you could actually get to see the model. You get to see what happens in the therapy session. So no script. This is just real, raw people who actually were courteous enough to share their story and struggle. And how did they get from point A to point Z?

Speaker 3: 54:32

Yes, and you can also watch. If you're a listener right now, you can watch this podcast episode on my YouTube channel, annette Benedetti. You can also scroll down to the notes in this episode. You're going to find a way to subscribe to my e-newsletter because, of course, I will be sending out information that you're going to want where to get his books, where to watch his videos as well. So make sure to subscribe below. And I want to thank you so much for joining me today and answering all of these questions and giving my listeners some guidance, because I know for most of us, at some point we unfortunately have this experience, whether it's younger or when we're older, and I feel like, even if you haven't experienced infidelity, some of the information you shared today can help people who are stuck in their relationships move in a direction. So thank you so much for joining my pleasure and to my listeners, until next time I'll see you in the locker room. Cheers Ring loop.