Affair, Addiction, or Something More? Understanding the Story Behind Sexual Betrayal (Episode #121)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, we are talking today about something that we've talked about maybe in a roundabout way, infidelity. But is it infidelity? Is it sex addiction? Is it both? A lot of people are asking questions like, how do I even know how to describe what we're experiencing in our lives and the individual who is acting out? So your initial thoughts on how to get us started in this topic?

Well, I want to validate this question. I have so many clients who will come, and for a lot of clients, saying, hey, this is a sex addiction, can be really off-putting. There might be a lot of fear with that. And I'll have clients who really struggle with the label sex addiction. And as a clinician, it's tricky to know. It's tricky to know. I don't know, is this an affair? Is this a one-off or a two-off, or is this a sex addiction? And so I'm excited for this conversation because I know we want to clarify and also acknowledging that the conversation that you and I will have today is general and definitely probably need some professional help if, if this has been occurring. If you're wanting a very specific label, that's probably not something that you and I can diagnose here and now in, in this.

Sure. I mean, obviously they need to figure some of the depths of where they've been, but maybe we can give some guidelines, right?

Like kind of some roadmaps. Yeah.

Well, because I've often been asked by the person who's been betrayed, Is it more than just this affair infidelity? And if it is, how would I know? And then as a therapist, getting the proper assessment, MaryAnn, because these assessments to me give me so much more depth of understanding of what my clients have experienced and what they've been through. So being able to determine, is this an affair or is this a deeper-seated sexual compulsivity? Is there more to that story? And so I want to break that part down today because misdiagnosed, and I think this is the biggest problem we have, Marianne, is people can misdiagnose saying, oh, this person has a sex addiction when in reality they may not. It might not be an addiction at all. In contrast, when people are saying, well, they had an affair, but it's way deeper than an affair. And if you misunderstand that, you might be mistreated.

Right. There is that space of, I have no idea. I don't, I don't know what this is. And, and so we are speaking specifically to that space as well today of recognizing oftentimes we talk about a disclosure, having a formal therapeutic disclosure, and this is something that takes time to get there. This is a hard space to be in. I don't know. I know my partner's done something, but I just have no idea. The extent of it and what it is.

Right. And that, Marianne, I think is probably one of the more common issues that happens with the betrayed partner. Without the information, the mind begins to, what I often say is worst-case scenario thinking, because I don't know what I don't know. And if I did know, then maybe it would settle my mind. And that's why there's so many questions that betrayed partners ask. Did this happen? Did this happen? What about this? And what about this? Because they're trying to get clarity. They're trying to get this, this contained, so to speak, right? And, and without that information, the brain is naturally— and I think almost we ignore this— but naturally it's seeking for information and data. And if you're the betraying spouse, the longer you don't provide information, the more difficult it is for your partner's nervous system to stabilize.

We live in a world, in a culture that is so pornified There's so much pornography, and especially in the past 20 years with the advent of the smartphones, it is so accessible and it is so normalized. And so being in a space of trying to figure out, you know, is this a pattern that my partner has? Is it an addiction? Is it not? I don't know if it's a pornography addiction, right? If it's just porn, I don't have any measure maybe to know. And so This is another layer of complexity that adds in here.

So if we take off of the original topic of infidelity and affair, which we often get that phone call of like, my spouse had an affair, I'm looking for affair therapy. So when people come in, what's one of the first things that you do, Marianne, to determine, get that information so we're actually understanding what we're treating? Because I think this is where a lot of people, they get a misunderstanding because they think We need couples therapy, but before we get couples therapy, how do we treat what we don't understand? If you don't understand it, how can you treat it?

I think there's a couple of different ways to look at this. My initial training taught me that there's 3 A's. As long as there's an affair, an addiction, or abuse going on, we don't work with the couple. We have to create some safety in the relationship. And so some individual work has to be done to stop those behaviors so that we can start working on, on the relational part. And also there's a space, I think, also in there where individuals and couples really need to learn oftentimes some communication skills because we're dealing with the highest conflict, the highest threat to the relationship, probably that the relationship may have ever had. And if we don't have the skills and tools to be able to have the conversations about these ruptures that definitely just ruptures, it makes it really difficult for that repair process as well. And so starting out, we do need to figure out, usually I'll say, hey, we want to have you start working, both of you working with an individual therapist to, to figure out where you're at. And as you mentioned before, that's often where we'll step into some assessments because as a therapist, I, I don't know what I don't know. And oftentimes I, I'm gonna be honest. A lot of times my clients aren't honest with me initially. There may be a lot of shame or they may not have told somebody or they'll tell me maybe three-fourths of the truth or half of the truth. But especially because it's a new relationship, it's not very often that a client comes in and lays all their cards on the table fully, 100% honest, because if it is an addiction, we're often working with behaviors where there's a lot of hiding and secrecy and a lot of denial. And so that takes a while to work through.

And that process, as you said, takes a while. But what I, I think it'd be important for our listeners to understand something you've said earlier, and I wanna make sure we circle to this one. And that is if they're in active addiction, if there's been abuse, or they're in the middle of an affair, couples therapy at that point may not be recommended, but we need to stabilize the couple still. And I want to talk a little bit about that process. So couples therapy by definition is we are actively working to repair the relationship and give you the skills and the tools to rebuild trust, to rebuild the relationship communication patterns in an effective way. Without proper assessment, couples therapy prematurely while a person's acting out, say in any addiction, substance use, sexual behaviors, if you create premature connection, in other words, you're doing couples therapy, but we're still ongoing in the affair or ongoing in any addictive behavior, that is not going to be productive. The reason why is creating a connection during that time, it just doesn't work well because I'm starting to trust or build trust. And all of a sudden I get more data, more information, more information. So initially we need to do some individual work, as you said, and we need to stabilize the couple by getting guidelines or structure of how to deal with this timeframe. When you're not able to fully rely on each other in some of these ways that maybe you have in the past before Discovery.

Yeah, I'll never forget one of my earlier cases with a couple when I just fresh out of grad school. I remember working with the couple and they were delightful. And usually I meet with a couple first. I meet with them together and we talk about their goals and, and then I meet with them both individually and have them do assessments and, and then kind of get an idea of, okay, where are you at? And I remember meeting with the female partner and she was telling me about the affair. And then she said, well, I'm still having the affair. I'm, I'm still meeting and I'm not sure that I'm ready to not be meeting with this affair partner. In that moment, I realized I can't do couples work with them because for her to come and try and repair this relationship, she has another relationship on the side that she is turning to in that relationship and she's betraying her partner actively, currently, right now. Nothing that would happen in that therapy room would be her showing up honestly. And that's the damage of trying to say, hey, let's have you try and, and turn towards each other. Let's try and rebuild some trust when there is open dishonesty happening. And me as a therapist, I can't do work there because that makes me a secret keeper that I'm holding that secret from. The other partner. And so, as you know, Dr. Skinner, it can get really messy really quickly. And so we have to address the affair part first. We have to address those behaviors before we can start working on let's help this couple heal.

And in that situation, if I were reviewing that kind of a case, I'd say simply, if I was supervising a therapist, I'd say we need to push pause on any couples therapy at this point. And talk openly. Like, it sounds like you're not ready to give up this affair. So couples therapy with you and your spouse probably needs to be pushed at this point, delayed until you make a decision. Right. Now, a few years ago, I was at a training and this guy had written a book on helping couples after an affair. And he said what I do, this is out there, but he said, I invite the affair partner to come in for a couples therapy with us. Oh, and no, this is what he said. It's right, that affair partner in, and, and in my office we sit down the parameters. Look, this couple, they're going to try for 90 days, no contact, no anything. Are you willing to do that? Are you both, are you guys willing to do this? Absolutely no contact. And if after the 90 days of doing my work this hasn't worked, then you go be with your affair partner. Well, now I, it shook me and I have never tried it because I have never been quite in that situation. But what I do know is until that relationship is severed and there's no contact and that's out of the picture in terms of I'm done, then any type of interaction afterward between is always a significant setback. Phone calls, messages, direct messages, whatever it may be, any of that that continues.

Puts a complete barrier to current healing because this is about safety and it's a threat to the relationship and the safety of the relationship. It's the threat to building trust. That's a huge threat.

That makes sense. And so is it an affair? Well, okay, so that situation we're trying to stop and address the affair, but now let's turn our attention to the other side of this. Is it more than an affair? Like in addition to this affair behavior, are there other sexual activities that are also going on, maybe even simultaneously?

Right. So, you know, Dr. Skinner, I don't know if you and I have talked about this analogy. There's an analogy that I've used for years and I look at it. It's like a tree. The tree has roots and in those roots, oftentimes individuals experience shame, they experience trauma, they experience some adverse childhood experiences, whatever they experience are kind of the roots. And the trunk of the tree is kind of growing up and somewhere in life, there's a, oh, this experience happened and I learned that I could turn to something sexual that took away the pain. And that's kind of the trunk. And then we have the branches and the branches are all these different types of acting out. So Could be pornography. It could be massage parlors. It could be strip clubs. It could be affairs, could be chatting, could be so many different things. And oftentimes we know that sex addiction is often progressive. And so it doesn't always stay with one genre. Sometimes it does, but it's often progressive. And I think this is a tricky space that we're having this conversation, and I'm glad that we're having it because an affair can be a progressive behavior of the acting out behaviors. And it can also have some other roots. It can also come stem from some other places. And so I know in working with you over the years, I know I've learned an awful lot about, oh, there can be some other reasons for affairs that they're not just necessarily the branches. They do probably stem from a trunk and the roots, but probably from some other places. And do you wanna talk about that?

Let me begin by saying it has been my experience, Marianne, that when we hear somebody has had an affair, we have to always ask what's the story behind it. Right. And to me, that is always the window into whatever the other parts of the story are. And usually what I find there is there's a longer history of sexual behaviors. For example, maybe it's pornography and then pornography escalated into chat rooms, chat rooms into conversations that became sexual. And again, that's not always the case. Sometimes it's a coworker and affairs occur for many different reasons. But without a proper assessment, you don't really know what's going on. Let's say a person has ADHD and let's also say that this person has heightened anxiety. Or social anxiety. Or let's also add to this, let's say that somebody's working in an environment and they're working with somebody who's pretty aggressive, meaning that they initiate sexual interaction. Because I've also, throughout my career, I've seen, you know, people are surprised that they had an affair, never would have done it, and yet in a specific context, they find themselves having an affair. Contrast that story with somebody who has had random sexual experiences throughout their entire life. For example, in college, multiple sexual partners, get married to one person, and then some of those previous partners come back into the picture and they come back into those relationships. Throughout my career, I've seen so many variations on why people have affairs that without understanding the individual's true, what we call sexual history timeline, you really don't know, Mary. So part of my assessment here is I need to understand the full sexual history as a therapist before I actually really try to implement any kind of a treatment plan, because I don't know the extent of the problem.

And I think part of that sexual history timeline, at least in my experience, oftentimes that's where trauma, a trauma timeline usually surfaces within that. They're usually intermingled. Not always, but oftentimes it's like, oh, and this happened at this timeframe. Oh, interesting how those fit together. And usually our clients don't know. They, they, they haven't connected those two together. My clients will often, when I say, hey, let's put together your sexual history timeline, they'll put it together and maybe it'll be some bullets and they'll have like, you know, half a page or something. And then we start to just ask about the first one and it, it opens up and there's so much there. That oftentimes they didn't realize. And then we look at the next one and the third one, and suddenly we start to see some major patterns starting to emerge that we hadn't even really realized that they existed there.

I've also found a situation where a person, say pornography was their primary way of acting out. And then years and years later, they found themself in a space where an affair was possible. And so I call it switching tracks, right? For most of my life, I've been focused maybe just pornography. And then all of a sudden this presented itself. Never thought I would do this. And so I have seen that as well. So again, some people have deeper roots of sexual activities that have been a part of their life since they were young, young, young. And other people, it really doesn't start till they're older. And some people say, well, how does that make sense? Well, I believe it actually makes a lot of sense to me because when we are constantly exposed to something and then we're exposed to something else that's new, the novelty button in our brain goes, what's this? And so I think being exposed and not addressing those things and continually being in that kind of environment, it's not— doesn't mean you're going to have an affair. In fact, most people who primarily view pornography, they'll probably never have an affair, but there will be a percentage of those people who will jump track. And to me, that's— we don't know. But we— what we do know is when people stop, say, looking at pornography and take back that part of their life, they're less likely to have an affair. At least that's been my experience.

So I think this is a really good place to bring in the Zeigarnik effect. And we've talked about this in previous podcasts, but the Zeigarnik effect basically is things that our brain doesn't have closure on, things that are still unresolved and left open, our brain is trying to resolve them. And so how do you see that, Dr. Skinner, fitting into this topic of an affair?

So usually, again, an affair, there's so many different variations on this one even, but if I've never contemplated having an affair, then I don't know what I don't know. And I, my brain isn't trying to finish a story, but now let's put it into the context of I saw on pornography something that was arousing related to an affair, or I was in a chat room and we started sexually chatting, what I call setting the table. Because once you start talking sexual with somebody outside of your primary relationship, you're setting the table in another kitchen, another, in another area. And that's very, very dangerous. That is the Zeigarnik effect in play because now I've started something, how am I gonna close this story? And I've actually had people say, I started talking that way and the next thing I knew it was blown up and I, and I had an affair. So again, there's that story. And when you start playing that game, you don't know the outcome. You really don't. You can't predict it.

And I remember years ago you talking about this similarly as we were talking about some trauma. And per my recollection, please correct me if you remember this and if I'm, if I've got a little bit wrong, but I recall you talking about an example and maybe this is just an example that you shared, but of somebody who'd been a male who'd been dating a female during high school and something happened and the relationship ended. And whether they were betrayed or whether they were rejected. And this is a space where it can catapult into repeating a pattern of engaging in the relationship and then them cutting off and dropping the relationship almost in an effort to come back and close up and rectify what happened to them. And so that would be a traumatic possibly response to an affair to close up that trauma from— so we'd call that a trauma reenactment.

If I was to just that concept all by itself, and I've seen this many times in my career, not just one case, but multiple cases where Somebody experienced some kind of relationship rejection, and after the relationship rejection, they'll get into subsequent relationships. They really aren't relationships. They're more of looking for validation that I'm enough. But as soon as they get close, their attachment injury from the previous injury comes back and they will pull back because I don't want to get hurt. And that then is reenacting where I'm having multiple relationships because I'm reenacting these traumas. Trying to finish the story yet. And I've seen that so many times that it's just hard because these individuals at this point, they feel ashamed of their behaviors. And interestingly enough, Marianne, I've seen this probably more in women than I've seen in men. Yeah.

I think one part of this that we haven't really talked about that you just mentioned though, is just the pain, the pain of an affair, the pain of Finding out, oh, my partner hasn't been faithful to me. There's been infidelity in our relationship. And I don't really know what that means. And I don't know what to call it. And I don't know, oftentimes there's a lot of shame tied to this. And so I don't really want to tell everybody about it, but I'm trying to figure it out and I don't even know what to call it.

Well, and the confusing part of it is An affair, if we were— again, I don't really like to define things because it constrains concepts. An affair could be any sexual experience where I have been with another person. I would put it in this way though, Marianne. When an individual, it begins, and I'm going to call an affair being sexual with another person outside of their committed relationship. The moment that begins, there's two things that happen. One is I either have to keep a secret or I have to talk about that. But what's not addressed there in that underlying part is while you're being secretive, while you're doing that and your partner does not know, that timeframe, that— can we call it a gap of space, of time? Sometimes it can be weeks, sometimes it can be months, and sometimes even years. What that does is it creates an unspoken chasm between between the primary partner and the person who's cheating. To repair that gap, if we call it that, to repair that, Marianne, what I often see here is you have to address the ways, and this is a repair process, you have to go back and identify the ways of deception during that gap. But if somebody says, hey, I had an affair and it happened last week, that gap is very minimal. But when it's over an extended period of time and that deception, I find that that's harder for individuals to overcome. Not that they can't, but all those years of deception, there are consequences.

Right. Dr. Omar Minwalla calls that an intentionally manipulated reality, that space of time that my partner knew and they were creating a false reality for me. And then that space, oftentimes a betrayed partner saying, Well, now I need to question everything because I have no idea what, what was real. I also want to go back and comment on— I know you were very explicit in defining affair as a sexual acting out with another individual. The research also shows that our brain, the way that the brain interprets it, oftentimes even with pornography or chatting or online sexual interactions, whether it's with AI or whether it's not for a betrayed partner, the brain, for most people, it doesn't really matter whether it's a person in the flesh or whether it's a person on a screen. It's my partner's having a sexual exchange or experience with someone that's not me. And that feels like cheating.

And to that, we could add, even if it's not physical, it may be emotional, right? Mentally sharing something out of our relationship that maybe we shared. With another person can feel that way. So there are multiple forms of this sexual betrayal that can occur. The real question, going back to the original question, is how can I even tell? I think my primary answer to that question is you have to understand the story. And in order to understand the story, that means that there needs to be work that's done, usually with a therapist, to unpack the story, to understand the story, And that's what you then would present in a disclosure and an emotional restitution letter, a 3-step process that we've talked about before, Marianne, because without that, then the betrayed partner continually asks questions, but without them asking the questions, either A, they don't care anymore, or B, they're just entirely exhausted and they don't know what else to do. They feel hopeless. And neither one of those are good for relationship repair.

Right. So I'm wondering, Dr. Kevin Skinner, How often do you feel like a partner who has had an affair, whatever umbrella we wanna put that under, but we just know there's been some betrayal. How often do you think they, they actually really know their story when you first meet with them?

I could unequivocally say in the beginning, they're usually dealing with a crisis at hand. Like I've, I got caught finally. Or some of them self-revealed because they feel the necessity for that. But usually in the beginning, when they haven't done a full sexual history timeline, they're actually surprised themselves. Like, I was having an affair. And then you start doing this digging and understanding and looking back in time. And that's when they're like, wow, I had no idea. I can't tell you how many times when I have done a sexual history timeline, and I'll usually do that in the early sessions when I'm working with those who are acting out. We'll just, I'll give them the assessments and the assessments that I'm referring to are in, in our field as certified sex addiction therapists. There's the Sexual Dependency Inventory, what we call the SDI. And if it's primarily they're viewing pornography, it's the Sexual Digital Media Inventory, SDMI. Those are things that certified sex addiction therapists have been trained to use. And for me, when I'm working with an individual, I like to understand exactly where they're coming from. So I usually will administer the assessments. As soon as I feel comfortable understanding their story, because I need to understand their sexual history and I'll start to get a little bit of their timeline and then I can administer the assessment to get a full depth. I can tell you many times when I've administered those assessments, they're absolutely game changers, helping me understand things that maybe I wouldn't have known to ask.

Yes. And I would add to that, it gives so much information so quickly. And for me as a therapist, It also helps me understand based on my client's answers, this client probably needs some inpatient, or this isn't as much of a problem. It, it helps me understand how severe my client's reactions are or their behaviors are. It also helps me understand their entitlement. It might also help me understand a little bit more about how they're attaching, and it really helps me narrow down and say, ooh, this area I don't need to worry so much about this, but over here, this is where we need to start. And so these are some tools that as trained therapists working in this that are really helpful to get a clear understanding, because when somebody comes into my office and says, this has been going on, okay, great. Okay. And it might take us quite a while to get through and dig through that person's denial or their internal deception, their self-deception about what's been going on. But something like an assessment is such a great starting place. And it's, you know, my client filled it out so we can ask a lot of questions based on what they've shared.

Fantastic tool. If somebody's coming to me for an intensive, MaryAnn, it's across the board, I give these assessments. They're very lengthy. They're 2-hour assessments. I often say to people, you know, start, do 15, 20 minutes, come back, do it again, keep going until you're done. But, but here's why I do it. I don't want to waste people's time. And I literally mean this. If you don't understand the problem, you can't treat what you don't understand. And the same is true of betrayal trauma. That's why I administer the assessments with the betrayal trauma piece. If I don't know what's going on inside of their lives, these assessments will probably save me 4 to 6 sessions of time. And a lot of people don't appreciate the value of that, but therapy's expensive. And I wanna save time and get directly to the issues that we need to address and do it as quickly as we can. So my final thought on that is if you're listening to this or watching this and you're starting to understand, or you're looking at like, okay, was it an affair? We're trying to understand the story. My strongest recommendation is take some of the key concepts that we've talked about today. Identify the sexual history timeline. Do these things with a therapist, get help so you understand. Especially if this has been an ongoing situation where you guys haven't known what to do with it and you feel stuck, reach out for professional support. It's so important.

I just, to add to that, Dr. Skinner, this is hard work. And a lot of times our clients don't understand themselves. How did I get here? I don't know how I got here. And, and working with a professional can help to really unravel and help. I know at least in my work, it's beautiful when my clients start to understand themselves and they're able to start making sense of their behaviors. Until we start to understand the pattern, we can't stop the behaviors, right? Because to stop the behaviors, we need to figure out what happened. How did I get to this place? And that is the work that we're talking about today. And so whatever it's been, if it's pornography, if it's chat rooms, if it's, you know, online stalking, whatever it might be, if it's a physical affair or an emotional affair, whatever it is, I invite all of our listeners and viewers to reach out and get help. Our goal here at Human Intimacy is to help individuals have the best relationships that they can.. And we know that that comes from showing up authentically and letting people see into you. And so whatever that takes for you, we invite you to reach out and get help because there's a lot of hope ahead.

And Marianne, I really appreciate that last part because so many times I've seen people wait 5 and 10 and 15 years. I'll never forget the story of an individual who came in and had known about her partner's betrayal for 5 years. And finally she's like, I can't do this anymore. Either we get help, I'm gonna get help, you need to get your own help. But if we don't do that, I'm not sure our marriage is gonna make it. That kind of verbal boundary was done with kindness. It's like, I'm not sure I can do this anymore. I'm gonna get help. And if you want our marriage to work, I strongly encourage you to. That kind of emotional support, that kind of then guidance that comes from the therapist, that helped solidify in this situation the support that they needed. And I've seen it, people wait so long and it makes me, my heart hurt when I see people who've been suffering in silence without really clear direction. So we encourage you to reach out for support in your area. If you're looking for a certified sex addiction therapist, then we strongly recommend you go to IITAP, I-I-T-A-P, and or sexhelp.com and you can get a therapist in your state. It's a, they should be trained as a certified sex addiction therapist.

Been a great conversation today.

We thank you for being a part of the Human Intimacy Podcast. We invite you to share it with others. If this has been beneficial, if you're attending a group, share it with your group members. Uh, we just appreciate you helping us share the word. And thank you so much for being a part of the Human Intimacy Podcast. And MaryAnn, thank you so much.

Thanks, Dr. Skinner. We'll see you later. And laugh when you laugh. Something's around you. It's like you're shining. You're a star in the night.