Laura: Okay, Sophia, quick poll. What percentage of Americans do you think believe having an affair is morally wrong? Sophia: Oh, high. Like, really high. Eighty percent? Ninety? It’s got to be one of the last things we all agree on. Laura: You're right on. It's over 90 percent. According to Gallup, it's more condemned than polygamy, human cloning, or suicide. It is the ultimate betrayal. Sophia: And yet… Laura: And yet, it happens all the time. Even in happy marriages. That’s the paradox we’re diving into today. Sophia: It’s a topic that makes everyone uncomfortable, but we have to talk about it. Laura: And our guide through this minefield is the brilliant psychotherapist Esther Perel, in her book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Sophia: Ah, Esther Perel. Her work is everywhere. She has this incredible ability to talk about the things no one wants to talk about, and she does it with so much compassion. The book is widely acclaimed, but I know it's also been pretty controversial among readers for that very reason. Laura: Exactly. She doesn't just condemn or condone; she investigates. And it's no surprise when you learn her background. She's the child of two Holocaust survivors, and she grew up in a community in Belgium surrounded by people who had seen the absolute worst of humanity. Sophia: Wow, I didn't know that. Laura: She says this taught her about resilience, but also about the danger of secrets and the importance of "speaking the unspoken." It’s what drives her to explore these taboos. And the biggest secret she tackles is this idea that affairs are just a symptom of a bad marriage.

Sophia: Okay, let's start there, because that’s the standard script, right? If someone cheats, something must be broken at home. The relationship is unhappy, the sex is bad, the connection is gone. Laura: That's the "symptom theory" of infidelity, and it's what we all default to because it’s simple. It makes sense. But Perel argues it's a dangerously incomplete picture. She says many of the people who come to her office for having an affair are not chronically unhappy. They often describe their partners in glowing terms. Sophia: Hold on. A loving partner, a stable life, great kids, a successful career… and they still risk it all? I’m sorry, but that sounds like someone who is just selfish or wants to have their cake and eat it too. Laura: It's a natural reaction, and Perel acknowledges that. But she pushes us to ask a deeper question. She tells this incredible story about a patient she calls Priya. Priya is a 47-year-old Indian-American doctor. She's been happily married for years to Colin, a handsome, successful, and attentive husband. They have three great kids, a beautiful home in the suburbs. By all accounts, a perfect life. Sophia: I'm already suspicious. Where's the "but"? Laura: The "but" arrives in the form of a fallen tree. After Hurricane Sandy, a huge oak tree falls in her neighbor's yard. A team of arborists comes to clear it, and Priya finds herself mesmerized by one of them. He's this tattooed, blue-collar guy, completely outside her polished, professional world. Sophia: Okay, a little crush. That happens. Laura: It becomes more than a crush. She starts finding excuses to talk to him. Soon, they're meeting in secret. In his truck, in her car. She says the sex is almost secondary. What she's addicted to is the feeling. She feels like a rebellious teenager again, alive and transgressive. She's horrified by her own recklessness, but also completely enchanted by it. Sophia: So she has this perfect life, a husband she loves, and she's risking it all for clandestine meetings in a truck? I still don't get it. What was missing? Laura: That's the question Perel asks. And her answer is revolutionary. She tells Priya, "I think this is about you, not your marriage." Perel has this amazing quote: "Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become." Sophia: Whoa. Say that again. Laura: "We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves." For Priya, the affair wasn't an escape from her husband; it was an escape from the "good girl" she had been her whole life—the dutiful daughter, the perfect wife, the responsible doctor. The arborist didn't offer a better life; he offered her a different self. Sophia: That’s a fascinating way to put it. So the affair is less about finding a new person and more like trying on a new costume for yourself? Visiting an alternate reality where you get to be a different character for a few hours a week? Laura: Exactly. Perel calls it a quest for a new or lost identity. For many people, an affair is an antidote to a feeling of deadness. Not necessarily deadness in the marriage, but in their own lives. It’s a confrontation with the roads not taken. The affair becomes this liminal space, this parallel universe, where they can explore a part of themselves they thought was gone forever. Sophia: That is so much more complicated, and honestly, so much more terrifying than just "my marriage is bad." Because it implies that no relationship, no matter how good, is completely immune. Laura: That's precisely Perel's point. It's not about affair-proofing your relationship with rules and surveillance. It's about understanding these deeper human longings for novelty, freedom, and identity that we all have.

Sophia: Okay, I can start to see the 'why' from the cheater's perspective, even if it's uncomfortable. But what about the person who gets betrayed? The pain must be unbearable. How do you ever come back from that? Laura: You're right. Perel is unflinching about this. She describes the discovery of an affair as a trauma, a "death by a thousand cuts." It's not just the lie; it's the shattering of your reality. The person you trusted most has become a stranger, and your shared past is now contaminated. Sophia: Your whole life story gets a dark new footnote. Laura: A whole new edit, really. She tells the story of another patient, Gillian, a successful lawyer in her fifties. She discovers that her husband, Costa, has been having an eight-year affair with his marketing manager. Eight years. Sophia: Oh my god. Eight. Laura: She finds it all on his computer. Emails, texts, photos, credit card receipts. A complete, detailed archive of a secret life. And Gillian says, "It was like my whole life had been erased. Just like that." She feels this profound identity crisis. She says to Costa, "I am now a member of the cuckolded wives club. This is inalterable... You made me this person. I don’t know who I am anymore." Sophia: Wow, that's brutal. The line "You made me this person" is just devastating. It’s not just about the sex or the lies; it’s about your very identity being stolen and rewritten without your consent. Laura: Exactly. The betrayal attacks your sense of self. And this is where Perel introduces her most radical, most controversial, and, I think, most hopeful idea. After the crisis, after the rage and the pain, she often says to couples: "Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?" Sophia: That sounds like a beautiful line for a therapist's office, but is it realistic? Come on, how can you ever trust someone again after that? After an eight-year lie? It feels like you'd just become the relationship policeman, constantly checking phones and worrying. Laura: It's a huge challenge, and Perel says many couples get stuck right there, in a cycle of punishment and surveillance. The ones who succeed, the "explorers" as she calls them, are the ones who use the crisis as a catalyst. They don't just try to go back to the way things were. They build something new. Sophia: But how? What does that actually look like? Laura: It starts with what Perel calls a "transfer of vigilance." The person who was betrayed can't be the one responsible for monitoring the relationship. The unfaithful partner has to take on 100% of the burden of rebuilding trust. That means volunteering information, being proactively transparent, and most importantly, showing genuine contrition and empathy. They have to be willing to sit with their partner's pain, for as long as it takes, without getting defensive. Sophia: So the person who cheated has to become the guardian of the relationship's new boundaries. Laura: Precisely. And the betrayed partner has to do the work of reclaiming their own self-worth, separate from the actions of their partner. It’s a dual journey. The affair becomes not the defining event of their relationship, but one event in a long history. They integrate it. They learn from it. The new relationship, the "second marriage," is often more honest, more resilient, and more deeply intimate than the first one ever was. Sophia: Because all the secrets are finally out on the table. They're forced to have conversations they probably avoided for years. Laura: They're forced to talk about desire, about longing, about what was missing—not just in the marriage, but in themselves. They move from a model of perfect love to a more realistic, and ultimately more robust, model of love that can withstand human fallibility.

Laura: So we see this incredible duality in Perel's work. An affair can be this deeply personal, sometimes even generative, quest for a new self. But it simultaneously shatters the self of the other person. Her genius is in holding both of those painful truths at the same time without flinching. Sophia: It really makes you think about the word 'fidelity' differently. It’s not just a synonym for sexual exclusivity. Maybe true fidelity is about being loyal to the reality you've built together, about protecting your partner's sense of self and their trust in the world you share. Laura: That's a beautiful way to put it. And it leads to her ultimate takeaway. She argues that instead of trying to 'affair-proof' our relationships with restrictive rules and fear, we should focus on cultivating what she calls 'erotic vitality.' Sophia: Which is not just about sex, I'm guessing. Laura: Not at all. It's about keeping curiosity alive. It's about mystery, playfulness, and novelty. It's acknowledging that your partner is a separate, sovereign individual with a rich inner world you'll never fully know. And that uncertainty, she says, is the very source of desire. We don't have to outsource transgression to an affair; we can collaborate in it within our own relationship. Sophia: It leaves me wondering, what parts of ourselves do we quietly let go of in our long-term relationships, and what would it take to bring them back without blowing up our lives? Laura: A question to ponder. This is Aibrary, signing off.