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To many, infidelity is a cut-and-dried topic: It's wrong, and the wronged party should end the relationship. But infidelity is often more complicated: What constitutes infidelity? Is there room for reconciliation? Why would you stay with someone who cheated on you? For a nuanced look at this complexity, listen to one of our favorite episodes, "6. Is it cheating? Challenging assumptions about infidelity" wherever you get your podcasts.
Episode summary
Let's talk about affairs! In this episode, we dig into Stacey Swann's messy family novel and get a professional perspective from Mayo Clinic sex therapist Dr. Jennifer Vencill. Our guests push back on some of the common ideas about what infidelity is, what it means to stay after infidelity, and what type of person becomes "the other woman."
In this episode, Dr. Millstine and her guests discuss:
- Infidelity is a health issue. Infidelity is a common experience that can greatly affect interpersonal and intimate relationships — and by extension, your mental health — with collateral damage for kids, friends and communities.
- The definition of infidelity is personal. "Cheating" means different things to different people. A lot depends on what you've agreed to in your relationship … or what you assume your partner has agreed to.
- Judge not. This novel brings the complexities of affairs to life. People may not cheat (or be "the other woman," or stay with a partner who cheated) for the reasons that you think. We discuss some of the characters who don't fit the mold.
Question for discussion:
- Even the best relationships are messy at times. What wisdom have you gained to help you move on (with or without your partner) from a breach of trust or conflict in a relationship?
Share your thoughts, questions and opinions below!
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I think of trust as something like a bucket. It fills slowly, drop by drop.
If something happens that blows a big hole in the bottom of the bucket, it can never be refilled.
This is true in any relationship -- employers, friends, families, businesses, even government.
That being said, not every violation of trust is a big hole in the bottom of the bucket.
But it's a lot easier to preserve trust than to repair it.
I learned this the hard way, and I wasn't always trustworthy myself.
But since my wife and I got together, all that changed, mostly because what we share is the best thing that ever happened to me, so temptation was easy to avoid.
Now, being older and disabled, temptation avoids me.
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