【032】重新认识出轨行为|Rethinking infidel
Speaker：Esther Perel
Key words：爱 婚姻 出轨 背叛
Abstract: Esther Perel（著名的情感理疗师），对人类出轨行为进行深刻的探讨，重新认识这样行为的成因，以及对它会对我们生活的影响及意义。
Content：
Question 1: what exactly do we mean when we say "infidelity" ?
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definition varies: hookup, a love story, paid sex, a chat room, a massage with a happy ending? sexting, watching porn, staying secretly active on dating apps?
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the percentage of people cheat can vary form 26 percent to 75 percent depending on your definition of infidelity
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speaker's definition of an affair- three elements:
a secretive relationship
an emotional connection
a sexual alchemy[魔法]
Question 2: why people cheat？
- Affairs are an act of betrayal, and they are also an expression of longing and loss. At the heart of an affair, you will often find a longing and a yearning for an emotional connection, for novelty, for freedom, for autonomy, for sexual intensity, a wish to recapture lost parts of ourselves or an attempt to bring back vitality in the face of loss and tragedy.
- we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy, but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy [is this true?]
- Men relied on women's fidelity in order to know whose children these are, and who gets the cows when I die.
Question 3: what infidelity hurts?
- it threatens our sense of self
- shatters the grand ambition of love
- a crisis of trust
Question 4: modern society paradox:
- culture tells us to pursue our desires [inclined to cheat]
- Staying is somethings described as the new shame[too sad]
Question 5: how can we heal from it?
- focus on investigative questions: What did this affair mean for you? What were you able to express or experience there that you could no longer do with me? What was it like for you when you came home? What is it about us that you value? Are you pleased this is over?
Digest
Now, monogamy used to be one person for life. Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
We used to marry, and had sex for the first time. But now we marry, and we stop having sex with others.
Ironically, we used to turn to adultery — that was the space where we sought pure love. But now that we seek love in marriage, adultery destroys it.
We used to divorce because we were unhappy, today we divorce because we could be happier.
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.
Affairs are way less about sex, and a lot more about desire: desire for attention, desire to feel special, desire to feel important.
