Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Can You Really Inoculate Yourself Against Infidelity?

Transcript

Can You Really Inoculate Yourself Against Infidelity? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:06
  Hi everybody and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom show.
• 0:09
  Today I'm going to be talking about a common question that I
• 0:12
  get, which is how can you inoculate yourself against
• 0:15
  cheating? Meaning what can you do to
• 0:17
  prevent yourself from cheating ever happening within your
• 0:19
  relationship? Before we get to that, I must
• 0:22
  tell you to subscribe my most recent subscriber episode is
• 0:26
  something I cannot honestly remember.
• 0:29
  I bet it had to do with sex though, or relationship.
• 0:31
  So let me check that out one SEC.
• 0:34
  Oh, I am back. And it is.
• 0:36
  How come all your wife's friends also have sexless marriages and
• 0:41
  when she tells you that nobody else has sex that's married?
• 0:44
  She's not lying. But there's a reason why.
• 0:47
  And you can listen to that. And 126 more if you subscribe.
• 0:52
  Only 899 a month, which is less than most Audible books for a
• 0:56
  lot of content. OK, so how can you prevent
• 1:00
  infidelity? You cannot.
• 1:02
  So you just can't. So I mean, I don't know how many
• 1:06
  different ways to say it. I tried to say it on a video.
• 1:09
  People get very upset. So like, for example, let's just
• 1:12
  zoom out. If somebody, God forbid, gets
• 1:14
  into a bad car accident, let's say their child is hurt in a car
• 1:17
  accident, the first thing everybody will say is were they
• 1:20
  wearing their seat belt? Plenty.
• 1:22
  Kids get hurt when they're not when they are wearing their
• 1:24
  seatbelt too, by the way. But it it's this common human
• 1:29
  thing to exert control, to give yourself the illusion of
• 1:32
  control, to be able to say, well, I always make my kid wear
• 1:35
  their seatbelts, so therefore let's hope that it's something
• 1:39
  that I don't do e.g. allow my child to not wear a seatbelt,
• 1:44
  and therefore I can tell myself that then my child will never
• 1:48
  get into a car accident and get hurt.
• 1:50
  Right. So we all try to do this as
• 1:52
  humans. It's to reduce cognitive
• 1:54
  dissonance about the idea that we really are in charge of
• 1:57
  really not that much. And we have only a limited
• 1:59
  amount of control over our lives.
• 2:02
  And this is something that a, A and religion get right.
• 2:05
  You know, I am, I am a part of neither.
• 2:07
  But you know it. It is.
• 2:09
  It's true. You know, there is a higher
• 2:11
  power than yourself. And whether you believe that's
• 2:13
  God or just like the entropy of the universe, it doesn't matter.
• 2:16
  You can't really control anything.
• 2:18
  You can do certain things to make it more or less likely, but
• 2:22
  I'll tell you, I talked about this show a lot.
• 2:24
  I don't remember what the hell it was called decoys or
• 2:28
  something. It was like in the 90s or the
• 2:30
  2000s. It was like awesome trash TV and
• 2:33
  it was about. These women, I wanted to see if
• 2:35
  their husbands would cheat. And so they got like these like
• 2:37
  hot women. They like paid them to sit down
• 2:40
  next to their husband, you know, what, a conference or something
• 2:43
  and talk about his favorite sports team while wearing like a
• 2:46
  push up bra and like his favorite perfume and leaning it
• 2:49
  and touching his leg. I mean those guys didn't have a
• 2:52
  fucking shot. They didn't have a shot in hell.
• 2:55
  They were sitting ducks, you know?
• 2:58
  And while a lot of guys listening to this would be like,
• 3:01
  Oh no, I would get all blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 3:03
  Yeah, you you don't know. You know, because everybody that
• 3:06
  I've worked with in therapy before, they cheat was somebody
• 3:10
  who never thought that they would cheat.
• 3:11
  With very, very rare exceptions, rarer as my career goes on,
• 3:16
  because infidelity is less and less socially approved of as
• 3:20
  time goes on. You know, so you can't really
• 3:23
  inoculate yourself fully against oh, I mean think about it like
• 3:27
  this. You know, like so so your
• 3:29
  husband, did you ever watch the show The Affair, which I tell
• 3:32
  everybody to watch over and over.
• 3:34
  Now I I actually, I feel bad ruining any part of any show
• 3:38
  that anybody could really like. So I just will not tell you
• 3:41
  anything about it except that you should watch The Affair.
• 3:43
  But I mean. Eponymously, you know, You know
• 3:48
  there's going to be an affair. And those people didn't think
• 3:50
  they were going to have an affair, you know, because shit
• 3:53
  happens. Like life changes or an illness
• 3:57
  or a death or you like, look at your partner and you realize
• 4:02
  they don't really even love you. You know?
• 4:04
  Or you think you realize that. And then you feel like time is
• 4:07
  ticking and you know there's like time in a bottle is
• 4:10
  playing. And then, like, the right person
• 4:12
  hits on you while you're drunk, and then what happens?
• 4:15
  You know, so. I'd say that honestly, the very,
• 4:18
  very first step toward any even partial inoculation of your
• 4:23
  relationship against infidelity is understanding that you have
• 4:26
  much less control than you think.
• 4:27
  And therefore you should be aware of your particular
• 4:31
  triggers that might make you lapse if you continue with the
• 4:36
  kind of narcissistic frame that you are above reproach and
• 4:40
  unless you're just a complete a a romantic asexual being.
• 4:44
  Then sure, you're not going to cheat, because why the fuck
• 4:46
  would you? You know, like, you would have
• 4:47
  no purpose doing that, but like it?
• 4:50
  Like if I hate money, I'm not going to rob a bank.
• 4:52
  But for anybody who is romantically and sexually
• 4:55
  motivated, you really have to think kind of What are my
• 4:59
  triggers and the one that you can best do something about?
• 5:04
  Is, well, a couple of them. Marital dissatisfaction.
• 5:08
  Although the majority of people who cheat, especially men, say
• 5:11
  that they are happily married. So it really has not much to do
• 5:14
  with whether you're happily married.
• 5:15
  However, you know for women who are I specifically see for women
• 5:21
  that are very unhappy, women cheat at very low rates, and I
• 5:24
  just wrote a post about that. It's called Women Don't Usually
• 5:28
  Cheat, So you could look at that on Doctor Psych mom.com, but
• 5:32
  when they do because women don't have as high sex drives.
• 5:34
  As men they're motivated largely by the children.
• 5:37
  Once they have children, and especially as perimenopause and
• 5:42
  menopause, you know, loom as as age increases, just the rates
• 5:46
  just drop you know and the rates start out at half of men anyway.
• 5:50
  So and anyway the the point being.
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  For the few women that I do see that cheat, there's one of two
• 5:56
  things happening. It's either a real issue with
• 5:59
  mood and personality, such as borderline personality or
• 6:03
  narcissistic personality, or they're like extraordinarily
• 6:06
  lonely in a marriage where, like, the man won't even really
• 6:09
  touch them. So kind of like the situation in
• 6:12
  Lisa Taddio's book, Three Women, where, like, the woman, she
• 6:16
  couldn't even get her husband to kiss her and then she had an
• 6:19
  affair. So, you know, things have to be
• 6:21
  really bleak or the woman has to be kind of disordered.
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  Is really the TLDR on that. Whereas for men, you know, there
• 6:29
  could be all manner of reasons really that they do it because
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  they have more testosterone, so which means they take more risks
• 6:36
  and they're more sexually motivated.
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  So for a guy he has so for a woman.
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  Feeling closer to your husband could be partial inoculation, of
• 6:45
  course, If the right romantic man swept into your workplace
• 6:50
  and you know you guys are just chatting and he likes all the
• 6:52
  same music as you, you know, like you don't really know what
• 6:57
  you're going to be tempted to do, right?
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  Nobody really does before anybody does anything in
• 7:03
  unforgivable they always are. Think that they're the kind of
• 7:06
  person who would never do that. So that's just something for an
• 7:09
  adult to make peace with is kind of we don't know what we don't
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  know. We don't know what's going to
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  make us feel a certain way under certain circumstances.
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  However, you know there are ways to partially limit the chances,
• 7:22
  such as knowing what your personal triggers are if you're
• 7:26
  a guy who acts real different when he drinks.
• 7:29
  I mean, don't stay overnight at conferences if you could help
• 7:32
  it, you know, tell yourself, hey, I'm the kind of person who
• 7:37
  would be really tempted when I was drunk to sleep with somebody
• 7:40
  else. Like, let that be in your
• 7:41
  consciousness instead of telling yourself you would never do it.
• 7:45
  Because this is how I work with sex addicts, because I do work
• 7:47
  with a lot of guys who struggle with sex and porn addiction.
• 7:50
  And and this is not a guy who wants sex, you know, every day
• 7:53
  with his wife. As I've discussed so many times,
• 7:55
  a sex addict is somebody that puts his marriage, his job,
• 7:58
  etcetera on the line, uses hours and hours of porn, has usually
• 8:02
  gotten hookers, You know, it's like a whole thing.
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  Sex workers, whatever we call them.
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  I say hookers with love doesn't matter either way.
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  These these these people are not the guy who just wants sex with
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  his wife all the time. So they're struggling in the
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  grips of an addiction and it's really a dopamine releaser and
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  and a substance is in the same way that alcohol or drugs would
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  be. But anyway, when when we work on
• 8:24
  not cheating we work on knowing what your triggers are.
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  For most of those guys it's honestly being alone with a
• 8:30
  woman. So don't be alone with a woman,
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  you know, try, try not to be alone with a woman.
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  You know, I mean, if you're headed up in an elevator with a
• 8:39
  hot woman, I don't know. I don't know if the Force will
• 8:43
  be with you or not. I mean, you know, if shit
• 8:45
  happens but judo in in in any, I mean and the elevator gets stuck
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  some bizarro situation right out of the movies or something.
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  But in a normal situation, what these guys try to do is say, oh,
• 8:56
  all right, so I'm not going to go to lunch with women anymore.
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  Not going to go to lunch with coworkers that are women.
• 9:02
  I'm just not going to do that one-on-one.
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  I'm not going to get drinks with my boss.
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  She's a woman. I'm not going to do that.
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  I'm not going to get drunk when I go, you know, to work events.
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  No, the work party. I'm not going to get drunk.
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  I may not even go, you know. So the more it's it's ironic,
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  the more that people understand that they might cheat.
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  The less likely they are to actually do it, the people where
• 9:25
  a blind sides them, or the people that are like these, you
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  know, kind of smug about how they would never do such a thing
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  and they judge the fuck out of everybody that does.
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  Then they get blindsided, they got no recourse, they have no
• 9:38
  plan of action because they were convincing themselves over and
• 9:41
  over that this would never happen to them, etc.
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  Etc. Frequently.
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  And this is ironic, a lot of these people were impacted by
• 9:49
  the infidelity of a parent, right?
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  So they say, Oh yeah, I'm never going to cheat on my wife, never
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  going to be a prick like my father.
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  He slept with all these women, had a lot of affairs, never
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  going to be like that. What happens though?
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  You have half of that man's DNA. If he was an impulsive risk
• 10:05
  taking, sensation seeking addictive kind of guy, well
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  shit, you know, I mean you you you may be as well, you know.
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  And when you're under the right circumstances and you have no
• 10:14
  game plan because you've only told yourself I will not.
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  I am not bad like him and and thought in these very black and
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  white primitive childlike kind of dichotomies.
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  You know, then, then you're you're fucked.
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  You know you are Sol because you don't have any kind of game plan
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  When the woman sits down with the perfume and touches you on
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  the leg because you never thought you would be tempted,
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  despite how truly ridiculous that is.
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  When you really put it out like that, of course any human could
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  be tempted, you know, and and if you're tempted and the person
• 10:45
  says and does all the right things, not because there's some
• 10:47
  succubus or some seductress or some seducer.
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  Because like you and them click, they too are an Amago.
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  You know, like you could have a lot of Amagos.
• 10:59
  So Amago, as you know, I don't have to reinvent the wheel.
• 11:02
  Google that term on my site. If you don't know what it is, if
• 11:05
  you somebody similar to your caregiver in a way that
• 11:07
  subconsciously motivates you to want to click with them and they
• 11:10
  feel like home, etc, etc. So there's a lot of people like
• 11:14
  that. And so if you're in a marriage
• 11:15
  where you don't really feel understood and guess what?
• 11:18
  There's like no secret sauce to make your marriage to somebody
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  who's more attractive than a potential cheater a potential
• 11:26
  cheating partner rather. So if you're feeling unloved and
• 11:31
  understood, sure, work on your marriage.
• 11:33
  But does that mean that you still will not meet somebody who
• 11:36
  you ever click with a little bit better?
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  What the hell? Of course you can.
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  So you need to have maybe a game plan that says, you know what, I
• 11:43
  am at risk, every human's at risk of cheating, right?
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  So except, as I said, the asexual slash a romantic because
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  why? Why would they?
• 11:51
  But you know, what would my game plan be?
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  And then some people think when they do this thought experiment,
• 11:58
  they have a very taboo thought, which is?
• 12:01
  Fuck it. You know I'm not happy.
• 12:05
  I'm not happy in this marriage And if that woman sat down next
• 12:08
  to me and she also liked the Packers and she put her hand on
• 12:11
  my leg, she wouldn't even have to like the fucking Packers.
• 12:15
  You know? And and in that case you know
• 12:18
  you are truly at risk for infidelity now or later.
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  So at that point would be when you would really want to
• 12:25
  reevaluate your marriage, you know and say do I really want to
• 12:28
  be in this marriage and or. Can I?
• 12:31
  Hopefully. And 1st, can I work on it?
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  Can I work on feeling closer and more connected so that I don't
• 12:37
  think fuck it. You know, which a lot of
• 12:40
  unhappily married people do now, the happily married people, they
• 12:43
  got the ones who cheat, which there are many.
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  That is a majority. Because the number one reason
• 12:47
  people cheat is to feel alive. Not to, not because they hate
• 12:50
  their spouse, you know, but. The the number one thing you
• 12:55
  know that that people have to think about when they're happily
• 12:58
  married is to focus on what they would destroy.
• 13:02
  And sometimes that can be sobering, like a lot of people
• 13:04
  are like, Oh my God, my wife would just she she would be so
• 13:07
  upset. Yeah, she would, man.
• 13:08
  But guess what else would happen?
• 13:10
  She would stop being so sad. Then she would get really angry.
• 13:13
  Then she would get the lawyer that her sister told her about.
• 13:16
  Then she's going to take half of everything.
• 13:18
  The kids are going to ally with her, potentially because you
• 13:20
  screwed somebody else your mother would be mad at.
• 13:23
  You everybody would be talking to her more than you.
• 13:26
  Like sometimes when you really walk through some of this shit,
• 13:28
  then it can also help people who are in the throes of almost
• 13:31
  beginning an affair not begin an affair because they haven't ever
• 13:35
  really thought about all of the consequences.
• 13:39
  You know, they've just gotten to the place where their wife slash
• 13:42
  husband would be so sad. And that's very bad, but it's
• 13:45
  not quite as bad as you would only get to see your kids half
• 13:47
  the time and probably they wouldn't want to come over to
• 13:49
  your house then either in a worst case scenario because you
• 13:52
  left mommy for your secretary, you know, that sort of thing.
• 13:56
  So to summarize, everybody is at risk for cheating every single
• 14:01
  person. If you think about it like that,
• 14:03
  I mean it makes sense like everybody's at risk for a car
• 14:06
  accident, the perfect storm of of events, you know, could
• 14:10
  happen. That's that's the the truth.
• 14:12
  So everybody's at risk. People, another interesting
• 14:15
  ironic thing is that the people that I work with that seem the
• 14:18
  most reasonable about this and actually do practical things to
• 14:23
  stop themselves from cheating are prior cheaters.
• 14:25
  So sometimes, like in my Facebook group, which y'all
• 14:28
  should join, it's very interesting.
• 14:30
  Lots of discussion people say, is it true Once a cheater,
• 14:33
  always a cheater. That was a thread and I said
• 14:35
  definitely not. I mean, people could stop
• 14:37
  smoking crack, you know what I mean?
• 14:39
  So obviously they could stop being a cheater and frequently.
• 14:43
  They are exactly the people who can know how to do that, you
• 14:46
  know, I mean, shit, it's like that guy that a personal trainer
• 14:49
  who gained like 100 pounds and then he lost it so that he could
• 14:52
  tell his clients that he had been there and he actually knew
• 14:53
  about weight loss. About those pretty, you know,
• 14:56
  smart, right, As a marketing tool.
• 14:58
  But you know, if you've been there already, then you don't
• 15:02
  have any illusions. It's like people in their second
• 15:04
  marriage, they don't have any illusions about how perfect they
• 15:07
  are. You know, so frequently they
• 15:09
  want to work harder on themselves and and you know and
• 15:13
  and understand their partner better with fewer illusions,
• 15:16
  right. So if you've already cheated,
• 15:18
  you don't have any illusions about yourself.
• 15:20
  So you're like, oh, I'm the sort of person who should not go out
• 15:23
  and get drunk at parties. That that's me.
• 15:25
  I'm that kind of person. I'm the kind of person who
• 15:27
  cannot be trusted. When I've had too many drinks to
• 15:30
  talk to an attractive member of the opposite sex, I just can't.
• 15:33
  So the more that you know, the more that you can help yourself
• 15:36
  in that domain. And similarly, if you are
• 15:41
  somebody who is very emotionally motivated, I shouldn't have, you
• 15:45
  know, deep conversations with guys at work, you know, just
• 15:48
  really shouldn't do that because that makes me feel more unhappy
• 15:52
  in my marriage and it makes me start having sex dreams about
• 15:55
  that guy. And then, you know, who the fuck
• 15:57
  knows what could happen? In my last marriage, I had an
• 15:59
  emotional affair. I don't want that to happen
• 16:01
  again. That would be what a woman would
• 16:03
  say in this situation, because, and don't make no mistake, for
• 16:07
  women an emotional affair is a big deal.
• 16:09
  A lot of guys think if it's not physical, it's not a big deal.
• 16:12
  If she's in love with somebody, that's a bigger deal than if she
• 16:14
  had a one night stand. To her.
• 16:17
  To her, she's she's a more risk for for leaving if she has an
• 16:20
  emotional affair than a one night stand, which is what guys
• 16:23
  don't really necessarily realize.
• 16:24
  They're looking at it from the other perspective.
• 16:27
  But anyway, that's just an aside.
• 16:29
  So this is an interesting one to think about.
• 16:31
  And if you are one of the few people whose spouse wants to
• 16:35
  listen to my stuff because again, don't force it down their
• 16:37
  throats. Take what you can and start
• 16:39
  conversations if they don't like to listen to my podcast.
• 16:42
  Not everybody likes to listen to my podcast.
• 16:44
  You know, I'm, I'm not a universal like, you know,
• 16:47
  because I am straightforward, etcetera.
• 16:50
  But you know, the point is you can start a conversation like,
• 16:54
  you know, what do you think? Would would would be a risk
• 16:58
  factor for you for cheating. Now don't do this if you're like
• 17:01
  Mr. Preoccupied Attachment who like brings us up like 17 times
• 17:04
  a day like over coffee like oh hey, cheated on me yet today
• 17:08
  like then just like never ever talk about it.
• 17:10
  But if you're like somebody else who actually wants to like you
• 17:13
  know bring up a new topic and learn more about somebody you
• 17:17
  say, did you were you ever, you know somebody who thought that
• 17:21
  you might cheat or that you would, like, never cheat Or if
• 17:23
  you did like what do you think that risk factors would be for?
• 17:27
  For you, you know, it's an interesting conversation, you
• 17:29
  know, and a lot of people in their second marriages have had
• 17:32
  it because they've lived longer and they've had more things
• 17:35
  happen, you know, and people who have had infidelity in a prior
• 17:38
  marriage generally talk about this in the early stages of a
• 17:42
  new relationship, you know, in terms of how they're not going
• 17:45
  to have that happen again or they don't want it to happen
• 17:47
  again. And this is what they do
• 17:48
  differently, etcetera, etcetera. It's an interesting
• 17:50
  conversation. So, you know what?
• 17:51
  If your spouse really doesn't like to talk about these kind of
• 17:54
  things, You just think about it, you know?
• 17:55
  Because if your spouse, I mean really quite definitionally, if
• 17:59
  your spouse is somebody who doesn't like to talk about
• 18:01
  things on a deep level and you are somebody who listens to this
• 18:04
  podcast, then. Not for nothing.
• 18:07
  You may be a little bit more at risk than you think because
• 18:10
  you're already feeling emotionally lonely.
• 18:12
  So think about ways that would be you to, to inoculate
• 18:15
  yourself, even partially, as I said, which is as good as we can
• 18:19
  get against the potential of infidelity, you know, which is,
• 18:23
  which is a terrible thing to do to somebody.
• 18:25
  And in a worst case, you know, it is better.
• 18:29
  It is usually better to leave. And I say usually, because then
• 18:32
  I have these guys who are their 60s and tell me, yeah, I slept
• 18:35
  with women on business trips. Years ago, my wife never found
• 18:38
  out. And I don't know, you know, she
• 18:40
  kind of doesn't want to know. She never really asked so much
• 18:42
  what I did. There's different cultural and
• 18:44
  generational influences on this kind of thing.
• 18:47
  But in the majority of cases, for my listeners in their 40s
• 18:50
  and 50s, your partner really does not have a don't ask, don't
• 18:53
  tell probably and just really would be terribly hurt until you
• 18:58
  shouldn't do it. And so therefore you should
• 19:00
  think about your own potential triggers in a very open and
• 19:04
  honest way for yourself. All right.
• 19:06
  I'll talk to everybody soon guys.
• 19:08
  Have a great day.