Is Infidelity Really Inevitable?

Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, MD, Infidelity: Why Men and Women Cheat

It’s difficult to know how common infidelity might be in today’s sexually amorphous society. However, once it happens to you, the chance of lingering damage is 100%. Psychologists who study people who have been betrayed by their spouses say the damage resembles combat stress disorder, and people who have survived infidelity often spend years learning to trust again. How can we prepare for, or survive, this kind of trauma?

Manhattan psychologist Kenneth Paul Rosenberg started out as an addiction specialist, and he insists the neurological mechanisms of addiction strikingly resemble those of love. Hear me out. Though Rosenberg explains it better than I could summarize, in brief, addictions appear to mimic the human need for love and attachment. Addiction basically happens when our love impulse gets misplaced. Having read Johann Hari and Gabor Maté, I find this painfully plausible.

Discussions of “infidelity” sometimes stumble because we don’t have a consistent definition. Does infidelity require sexual intercourse? Rosenberg says no; if you excuse your flirtations because they don’t get physical, the damage to your marriage could be equally devastating. Yet even Rosenberg admits many of his own friendships with women are characterized by sexual tension. So clearly more factors than just “what we do” matter in calibrating infidelity.

Infidelity, in Rosenberg’s telling, has certain predictable neurological patterns. No matter the nuances of your real-life circumstances, the cheating brain goes through mechanical motions which scientists can map and diagnose. By understanding these, you can potentially identify when your thoughts stray into unfaithful directions, and prevent thoughts turning into actions. You can also reverse the trend if you’ve already strayed over the line into infidelity.

Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, MD

The real pain comes, not in your own unfaithfulness, but in discovering your spouse has betrayed you. (Rosenberg embraces moral terms like “betrayal”; he doesn’t hide his loyalties on the issue.) The one person you must trust the most, the one you turn to when others undermine you, becomes the one you actually trust least. You find everything ripped from beneath you. That’s where the PTSD-like damaging repercussions come in.

Fortunately, even in this moment, neuroscience offers us remarkable insights into handling and recovery. We know exactly what motivates people’s behavior in moments of betrayal: the desire to confront the wrong person, for instance, or our tendency to obsessively seek further evidence, a tendency neuroscientists call “pain shopping.” Yes, that’s a real term. And again, by understanding our harmful tendencies, we can avoid falling into the most common traps.

Rosenberg confronts one of the most common human failings in unstintingly scientific terms. This means using hard quantitative research to consider behavior that often has more than one cause. Unfortunately, though the dust-jacket synopsis promises the latest research, Rosenberg admits infidelity is difficult to study longitudinally, and some of his cited research is decades old. I find this regrettable, because all science reflects the era it was conducted in.

But in maintaining his scientific eye, Rosenberg doesn’t have some illusion of complete objectivity. As a clinical therapist, he salts his research descriptions with narratives culled from his practice, including group sessions and couples therapy (he works to maintain confidentiality). After all, no matter how scrupulously scientific his desires, infidelity is a human behavior, with all the complexity and nuance humans bring into the discussion.

Be aware, this means frank discussions of sex. Sometimes, Rosenberg uses the dictionary to call things what they’re called, but he also uses common vernacular language to ensure a general audience understands his meaning. Don’t say you weren’t warned when his language occasionally turns coarse. That said, there were some occasions where I felt his “plain English” ventured into unnecessary vulgarity. Let your values decide.

Rosenberg starts from an assumption of committed monogamy; though he has a chapter on open relationships, polyamory remains mostly outside his scope. He doesn’t, however, assume either heterosexuality or formal marriage (though he uses marriage language as a shorthand). Therefore, he remains approachable for most people in serious relationships. His precepts are scientific enough to apply to differing relationships, yet personal enough to customize for your unique situation.

Infidelity isn’t inevitable, and despite many cheaters’ self-justification, not everybody cheats. But some do, and when that happens, the consequences can go far beyond the sexual realm. Rosenberg wants you to honestly evaluate your situation, to gauge whether your relationship can survive, and how you can recover from your partner’s, or your own, betrayal. He doesn’t pretend it will be easy. But, given appropriate tools, Rosenberg believes that healing really is possible.