What Can Lead A Person Who Is In A Relationship To Be Unfaithful?
Many times people talk about infidelities with reference to people’s “way of being,” as if due to their identity, their essence, they were predestined to deceive their partners. However, decades of research in the field of Psychology show that the context and the ways in which we learn to relate to others are fundamental in the appearance of infidelity in marriages and courtships.
Taking this into account… What makes a person involved in a relationship end up being unfaithful? Here we will delve into this topic by reviewing the most common causes.
There are many people who have been unfaithful and, if they could go back, they would not be; They greatly regret what happened and everything in their behavior shows that they do not feel represented by that way of behaving. In cases like this, one may wonder how it is possible for a person to damage one of the most important relationships in her life through an action (or a series of actions) that he cannot even rationally explain.
Of course, in some cases the main cause behind infidelities has to do with markedly antisocial personality traits; This is what happens in individuals with serious difficulties empathizing and who only think of others as means with which to achieve material objectives or generators of immediate pleasure. However, most people are not like that, but that does not prevent infidelities from being a very common reality that is estimated to affect approximately a third of relationships.
So… What is it that makes people who are, in principle, “normal” and have the capacity to love and be good to others, commit these actions? The explanation lies not in their personality or their inherent characteristics, but in the relationship dynamics with their partners; the type of processes that can be addressed from couples therapy based on the systemic perspective
What makes people commit infidelities?
There are many reasons why a person can be unfaithful, it may even happen that they do not care about hurting their partner or do not have the courage to leave their partner first and then have other relationships. Now, in many cases, infidelity takes place in relationships that are not damaged from the root, and are committed by individuals who begin to suffer a relationship crisis due to Coexistence habits and communication routines that are problematic, despite the fact that they are seen as something “normal” or details that apparently have no importance. Here you will find a summary of these causes that have to do with the context in which people live.
1. Lack of communication
It seems silly, but something as important as infidelity can happen because of a misunderstanding. Because certain topics related to sexuality are somewhat taboo even among those who have been a couple for a long time, It is common to not have conversations about where to draw the line between what is considered breaking the commitment and what is not.
2. Tendency to self-sabotage due to attachment style
Attachment is the way in which we learn to bond with others from our childhood, when we have our fathers, mothers or main caregivers in the family context as our main references. For example, approaching personal relationships from the fear of abandonment is not the same as doing so from curiosity to get to know people, or from the expectation of suffering disappointment when meeting new people.
There are people who are very insecure due to their avoidant or anxious attachment style and that, faced with a bond as intimate as a couple, they may have problems managing their fears about the future, about what they can or cannot expect from the person they love. In many cases they end up boycotting that relationship by committing infidelities out of fear of commitment and the possibility of being in an alienating and unsatisfying marriage (if they have developed an avoidant attachment), or because they feel abandoned emotionally and physically (if they have developed an anxious attachment). In both cases, infidelity is a way to dysfunctionally mitigate anguish and fear of unwanted loneliness.
3. Poorly managed mistrust
In some relationships, a certain predisposition to mistrust (generated by jealousy or any other aspect linked to the way of managing emotions) can lead people to adopt a passive-aggressive attitude and “get even” of the other person committing infidelity, assuming that the other has done the same before. It is a way of addressing conflicts without having to really face them, and that only seeks to eliminate the feeling of being a victim of infidelity.
4. Life crises
When the cause belongs to this category, it has to do with the difficulties in facing a new life cycle, including our partner in the efforts to face this type of crisis together.
Some of them are vital family crises Examples of this type of experience are couple crises triggered by the lack of resources and/or experience to adapt to the need to raise and care for a small child or a child of adolescent age; the empty nest crises that occur when children become independent and an existential void arises when the role of caregiver is left aside, etc.
For its part, individual vital crises They are, for example, the lack of references on what to do when losing the job in which one has been working for many years; the feeling of not being prepared for upcoming fatherhood or motherhood; a migration to a country very different from the one we know and in which we have grown up; someone very important dies, etc.
Are you looking for couples therapy services?
Once we understand what is behind infidelity, it is much easier to repair the damage caused and restore balance in a relationship. In this sense, if you want to start a couples therapy process, contact me.
My name is Blanca Ruiz Muzquiz and I am a psychologist with extensive experience as a family and couples psychotherapist, intervening from a systemic perspective.
