Intimacy & Infidelity

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So often when we cheat, what we crave is a different version of ourselves, even more than we crave the other person. Meaning it's not necessarily about the person that we're having the affair with. It's about how this person made us feel.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily, and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sexual. Here's something wild. Ready? Nearly half of people in monogamous relationships report they've had affairs, according to recent research. Half. And that's just the people who admitted it to a survey. And we can all agree that cheating on feels awful, as in the literal worst. So why is this common? Well, in this episode, we're talking trust and infidelity as we break down the reasons why people cheat, what to do if an affair has happened, and deciding whether to rebuild or break up and move on. Plus, I take your questions on trust and infidelity and treatments for infidelity, like how to restore your confidence after an affair what to do if you suspect or just caught your partner cheating, and how to come back from online infidelity. All right, Intentions with Emily. For each episode, I want to start off by setting an intention for the show and I encourage you all to do the same. So when you're listening, what do you want to get out of this episode? Well, my intention is to help you feel safe again after cheating. Whether it happened to you, you were the one that did it. Infidelity is complex, but by the end of this show, I hope you feel like healing is possible and you can move forward in a healthier direction. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show. My new article, ask Emily how do I tell my partner I don't like something? Is up@sexwithemily.com also check out my YouTube channel for more sex tips and and advice. If you want to ask me a question, leave me your questions or message me at sex with emily.com askemily. You can also call my hotline 559-talk-SEX or 559-825-5739. Always include your name, your age, where you live, and how you listen to the show. Oh, and you can totally change your name and remain anonymous. I'm cool with that. All right, everyone, enjoy this episode.

All right, I'm going to get into your questions about affairs and infidelity. But first let me just set the stage for you here because we can learn so much about relationships through studying modern day affairs. Because listen, affairs aren't what they used to be and marriage isn't either. So affairs, think about this. They used to be expected back in the day. Like back in the last century, people were like, oh, you know, men are going to have affairs and women are going to just kind of not say anything and it's going to be hard, but that's what happens. But remember what was also going on then. That's when we married for property. It was a business arrangement. But only last century we decided to marry for love. Because for so much time it was a decision that we made where essentially women, especially in the United States, we were property. But now modern couples, especially marriage, is no longer about your economics. It's no longer about what everyone's bringing to the table financially. My parents aren't involved. Your parents probably aren't involved. Your parents might not be involved in your arrangement. But now marriage is a free choice. Like we all have free choice. It's and two individuals and we are deciding that we want to be together. And it's not based on money at all. It's based on love and affection and romance. And hopefully, you know, you're having hot sex, too. But the challenge of affairs comes in when we still want everything that the traditional family was supposed to provide. Okay? And a lot of this work, Esther Perel has done so much great work on this. She has a wonderful book called the State of Affairs. And she really turned this thinking on its head about affairs. So we still want property and children and security, but we also want our partner to be our best friend and to be our therapist and our confidant and to desire us and be interested in us and interesting all the time. And to quote Esther Perel, and this is one of her main tenets of her work, both in mating and captivity. And the state of affairs is that here's the conundrum we find ourselves in. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. Okay, so how does one person do all of that? You're setting your partner up for failure. We're setting ourselves up for failure to really expect that one person is going to be our everything. So you can see a lot of our marriage has changed over the past hundred years. Or marriage or commitment. Right. So it's not easy to stay in a committed relationship when we all have so many needs. And now we're told by society that we have to be in a monogamous relationship and this partner has to fill all of them. And that's challenging. How is that going to work? It doesn't work. And that's why we see so much infidelity today. We see, like, in almost half of relationships, there's some kind of affair. And it's not just a violation of trust, although that is what's really hard for a lot of us. It's sort of shattering. This grand ambition that you had about your relationship, this romantic love, it's tearing lives apart. That's why affairs are the subject of, like, great songs and literature and art. You know, when this happens, it is devastating. It's almost like a trauma. And it is a trauma. I'll get into some of that. But what you feel in your body, it's like a death almost. You're like everything that I once believed is now different. And it can take a huge toll on. On relationships. However, here's the good news. You can repair trust in a relationship. Couples can stay together after an affair, but it does take a lot of work to repair the broken trust. That's work that I'm going to get into in this episode and some couples, it won't work. For many, many couples, an affair is a binary thing. Like, if you ever cheat on me, I'm out of here. But some couples, they do recover, and they actually emerge stronger than ever from having gone through the deep, intimate, revealing, vulnerable process of recovering from the affair. Okay, so I just want to lay the groundwork so you can see where we're at today in our society. But let me get into the reasons why people have affairs now. It happens to really happy couples. Don't you always hear this from someone, like, we're in love? I love my partner. They're my best friend. We have amazing sex. I have no problems. I want to spend the rest of my life with my partner. And I had an affair.

So a lot of people think that the affairs are about the sex or about anger or getting back at your partner. There's a great study in Psychology Today that I kind of want to break down for you that's going to help illuminate some of these points. So it showed that the reasons why people have affairs. Well, the top one was they just fell out of love. And that's at 77%. There probably wasn't a deficit in an existing relationship, for sure. There wasn't, like, huge problems. But maybe they didn't feel love from their partner or they found greater love elsewhere. They'd been together a really long time when they grew apart. They're just not in love anymore. Now, it could also be for variety. 74% said, Partner's my best friend. I love him, but I just want to try something new. And maybe they were a little bored. And you might be happy to hear that it's not just for sexual desire. I think a lot of people think, if your partner has an affair and it means that I'm bad in bed, remember, if we're betrayed, we just think of all the worst things. I wasn't good in bed. I wasn't a good partner. I gained five pounds, and they left me. It's not necessarily. Only 32% said it was because of sexual desire. And maybe for those people, they weren't having enough sex. It wasn't the right style of sex, which a lot of you talk about. You want a different style than your partner. But the interesting thing, one of the top reasons which I'm going to end with here, 70% said it was situational forces, meaning their relationship is great. They were one of these happy couples. But something happened where maybe they were drinking or they were thrown into another opportunity. They didn't quite anticipate. Maybe they were traveling for work. Maybe they were at a friend's wedding. Like, who knows? Something happened, and they weren't with their partner, and they had an affair. And that's what many have said have happened to bring in Esther Perl's work again. She says, this is huge, you guys. So often when we cheat, what we crave is a different version of ourselves even more than we crave the other person. Meaning it's not necessarily about the person that we're having the affair with. It's about how this person made us feel. Maybe we felt freer. Maybe it hearkened back to a younger version of ourselves. So we felt like we could be silly or we could be sexual in ways we can't be with our partners, and we felt more alive. So that would be, like, something to look at, that it could be a situation, and that situation could be this person made you feel alive again. Right. What this tells me and should tell you is that when an affair happens, it's a wonderful opportunity to say, okay.

Clear up the stuff that happened in the past, like, if you felt.

Neglected or you didn't feel loved or the sex wasn't what you want, and talk about all of that now. And then you get to design a roadmap for the future and see, like, can we actually stay together? So that's what I like about this version, is that, yes, you know, that people think that it's so devastating to have an affair, but it doesn't always have to be. So some of the other reasons why we have the MO Is that we're lacking communication. We don't talk about boundaries or sexual satisfaction or our desires. Another big reason why it happens is technology. I mean, think about this. It's made it so much easier to connect with others. On the DL, in one survey I saw, 90% of women confessed to having an emotional affair with someone. And then there was another study I saw about divorce cases in court, and they showed that Facebook was mentioned in, like, the majority of cases over, like, the last five years or something. Meaning my partner was on Facebook, and they started, you know, having this emotional affair with someone. Or maybe they looked up their ex from high school to see if they're still attractive or if they're married. And so because of technology, that has also made it a lot easier to have extramarital affairs. Another reason is you might not be in the right relationship model, and that's sort of an elephant in the room that never gets addressed. I mean, maybe monogamy is just not right for you. Maybe it's not right for your partner. You should talk about that. Also think it's important to note finally that a part of this is cultural. So in America, we place a super high value on honesty. We say, like, I'm an honest person, I do honest things, tell the truth. Although in other cultures, someone's honor is of super high value. So not honesty, but their honor. So cheating and not telling someone, get this, not telling them in order to spare their honor is way more common and accepted. So it's just looking at it through different cultural lenses. So now we know why affairs might happen, but what do we do if it happened? Well, here's a few pointers. You both have to agree that you'd like to work on the relationship. That's pretty easy, right? Clear that, like, do you both genuinely want to work on the relationship? And I don't mean like the betrayed forgives the betrayer and says, that's cool, I'm okay with it, let's move on with our life. Working on the relationship takes time and effort and therapy and deep diving into all the issues and all the places you want to go. And you both have to agree. You want to work on the relationship. And essentially you need to acknowledge that the relationship is over. You're never going back to the relationship as it was. That relationship as you knew it is over because it's a clear break. However, you get to build a new relationship now. So you're starting a new one. The last one's over. And that might make feel really good to say, okay, we're both going to work on it. We don't even want to go back to how it was. Because you know what? A lot of times it's not even about the affair. As I just mentioned, it's about circumstances. Circumstances or technology or something happened. But you probably were feeling some discontent because most couples who don't have this level of communication and most couples don't, there was a bunch of other things wrong. So whether it's individual counseling or couples counseling, you are likely in a state of shock and therapy will be critical because it is not an easy thing to heal from. But you both have to agree. Not only agree that you want to work on it, focus on the symptoms that may have caused the fair. Okay. Versus focusing solely on the affair itself. Like, tell me more about the affair. How many texts were you sending a day like, I can't believe you did that. You can be in that phase for a while. Like, tell me everything. And it's horrible and blah, blah. But you can't stay there very long. You got to realize, like, there's other things going on. It takes two to tango. I'm not saying it's your fault that your partner had an affair, but you are both in a relationship and you're both are deciding that you want to make it work. So what I'm saying here is, do not justify the decision to cheat by pointing to issues in the relationship as excuses, because there will always be issues in the relationship.

Always.

Every relationship has issues. You have issues with yourself. You might have issues with your roommate, you have issues with your parents. They have issues. But if you're willing to do the work and get real with your partner on what hasn't been working without playing the blame game, like, you did that and I did that, and it's a good sign your relationship can be repaired. Okay, here's the other thing. There has to be remorse. There has to be honesty about why it happened. You have to let your partner know that, like, they're like, not going to be in contact with that person anymore. And there has to be lots of mutual care moving forward. If your partner's like, nah, no remorse, I did it. Get over it. Let's move on. What's for dinner? That's not going to work. Partner has to feel deeply sorry if you're the betrayer. Like, remorse, like, how does it make you feel? How do you see how it made your partner feel?

Right?

So all this stuff has to be present. Be selective about who you tell. Sometimes society can be really damning about it, and you tell all your friends and they come back and I can't believe you did that. And so I think it's great to talk to maybe one friend or trusted mentor, a therapist, but you don't need to tell everybody that it happened. One more thing to remember if an affair has happened. Rebuilding trust takes a lot of time. So you're going to be working on this for a while, but I want you to know that you're not going to always be talking about the affair. So I think the betrayer is thinking like, oh, my God, I don't want to keep reliving it. I said I was sorry. It was one night at a bar. I was traveling. Get over it. When I say work, you're not going to be recounting the affair. You're going to be doing the work that probably needed to happen in your relationship anyway. Okay, next point. Should you break up or work it out? I think that's the question that you always happens, like, should we stay or should we go? So there's some things to think about, all of the above, like, what to do when it happens. You need to know, like, can we work on it? But also, like, do you have kids together? And how old are you cheating? Your 20s is very different than cheating in your 60s, so it might play out very differently. Like, in your 20s, you might be, you know, just, is this your person forever? Like, I think you wait till your 30s to get married personally, but I think that what do you both want in the relationship? Sometimes the cheating can hurt, but maybe in your 20s, it's easier to move on than your 50s. Like, this is your life partner, and you've been together a while, and it just might be different. You might have more communication skills to kind of work it out. So the other thing to think about breaking up or working it out outside this event, pretend the affair never happened, which was terrible. Do you ultimately still love each other? Do you still love each other and do you want to make it work? Affairs can be an opportunity to deepen your intimacy. You can go deeper in your connections. You might feel more emotionally connected, sexually connected with one another. And weirdly, a lot of people report having the hottest sex ever with their primary partner after an affair. We're going to take a quick break, but stick around. We return. I'll be answering your email questions.

This is from Elliot in Texas. Hi, Dr. Emily. I rarely, if ever, hear about the effects of a wife having an affair on the husband. Men are supposed to be tough and macho, usually the one having the affair, et cetera. Men won't admit the emotional damage. It's devastating. It has made sex confusing, unfilling, and muddled. How do I get back to a healthy mindset? All right, Elliot, thank you so much for your question. And like I said above, you know, I think back in the day, we thought men were cheating and women were the victims, but it's a different ball game right now. Everyone's cheating. So first off, I'm really sorry that happened to you, and it does sound devastating. So let me just tell you this. Please be kind to yourself. You know, especially when things are reminding you of the affair. You know, maybe you came across something or drove past a restaurant that, you know they went to, like, something, and it stirs it up. So just know that, like, you know, if you're having a bad time around it, to be kind, work on communicating some of your feelings with your partner. I don't know how much work you guys have done about discussing about how this made you feel, using I statements without blaming. I feel this affair made me feel like I'm less important to you and I feel less connected to you sexually rather than saying you had this affair and now I don't wanna be naked with you. There's a very different tenor when we say I versus you and the blaming. The Gottmans, John and Julie Gottman, who are on the show, they've done some excellent work around repairing after affairs. You know, recognizing that it's betrayal and it's destroying the trust. And so not only Elliot, do you need to express your feelings, you know your partner does too. And you have to both agree that you're not gonna judge each other, you're not gonna criticize each other, there won't be contempt.

That.

And remember, it's not a one time conversation after an affair. You're going to keep talking about it and you need to find ways to connect emotionally and sexually. Start bringing back some intimacy. Now, it doesn't have to be going right back to sex, but you want to be more attuned and spend regular time together. So, like, rituals of connection could help lead to the intimacy. Like daily walks, eating meals together without screenshots, agreeing to like spend time together, not talking about the kids and not talking about the affair. All these things are really important points. So that's why I recommend you get started, Elliot, to kind of move past some of this really hard things you're going through because it is destabilizing and it just takes some time to recover. And so if you both have agreed to work it out, I wish you so much luck and patience. Okay. Thank you for your email, Elliot. This is from Serena, 24 in Arizona. Hey, Dr. Emily. I'm in a healthy, loving and supportive relationship with my boyfriend who I've been dating almost a year in March. My problem is I constantly feel like he's cheating on me. My boyfriend is very social. He has many friends, female, male. He's also a bartender, so he meets many new people. And I also work in the same industry. We've talked many times before how there needs to be boundaries when talking to the opposite sex, especially through different platforms on social media. And I know he would never cheat on me or do anything intentionally to hurt me, but I hate to say it. I've gone through his phone from time to time when I can't seem to scratch the itch that he's entertaining other girls. And I find him snapping messaging girls and sharing things he shares with Me to these girls who are his friends. I'm aware you can't control everything your partner does and that I have my own things to work on. But I always have the fear he's cheating on me. Emotionally, I want to get better, and I'm constantly working on myself, but I feel like I've always got this in my mind. All right, thank you for your email, Serena. So it's really common, actually, that people sort of worry about partners cheating when it hasn't even happened. Let me just run past you some of the reasons why people do this, okay? See if any of these resonate with you. Now, maybe you've cheated in the past and you find that, like, you're worried now that the cheating could happen. So just if that is you, you can overcome it again. You work through trust issues by discussing your past hurts and mistakes with a partner and telling your partner that, like, I used to be a cheater or in the past, I've cheated. I really want to be healthy about it. I'm having these unrealistic obsessions that you're cheating, but really I was a cheater and I don't want to cheat in this relationship. Like, that's just vulnerability, and that's just being real. So being real with your partner and letting them know that that's why you're having these thoughts could really help with the relationship. Another reason, like, you just might struggle with trust issues overall. You know, maybe you were cheated on in the past. You know, maybe even your parents. You came from a home where there was betrayal in the home, or your neighbors or your aunts and uncles. Like, there's a lot of reasons why we sort of struggle with trust issues. And yeah, it's because it was modeled to us as a child. And now that's how we're going to relate to people as adults. If we grew up in a home where someone was cheated on and one of your parents were like, everyone cheats. You know, don't trust men, don't trust women. This is gonna happen. Well, guess what? You're gonna believe when those were the messages you heard during those very formative moments that's gonna impact how you view your entire world and how you view relationships. So how you would work on this is to actually find a great couples therapist that can help you work through the issues you have around cheating and betrayal. And then you can work on trust in your relationship. And finally, another reason why people cheat is like, you just might not feel very worthy of it. You might have some self esteem challenges. Could be some of the problems above. So when it comes to like self worth and trust and having like a paranoia around cheating, it's important to have some like practices that will really help you. Like affirmations, like if I don't love myself fully because I don't feel like I'm capable of love, how could someone else love me in a way that I can't truly love myself or maybe even like myself? I know self love is really hard for people sometimes, but even to understand that concept that at least I want to believe that I am deserving of it, you can even just take that part of the affirmation like, I am capable of love, I am deserving of love, and I'm going to find love however I can. And hopefully that will start with love or acceptance towards yourself. So those are some of the reasons, Serena, you know, you can talk to your partner about this or just kind of think about these things and see what the next steps would be in healthy communication. One thing I want to point out that you brought up that I haven't mentioned yet is you mentioned, Serena, that there needs to be boundaries when talking to people of the opposite sex, especially on social media. And I just want to encourage people in a relationship now to set up those boundaries rather than obsessing about it or worrying or checking how many people they message on Instagram and snapping and all the things. What if you just said to your partner, I think we should have a conversation about boundaries with this stuff. Like, I see you follow all these hot people and it makes me feel this way. And if someone messages you, maybe you could let me know. Or you could not message them back. Like just have the conversations because sometimes just putting boundaries in place and discussing your vulnerabilities around it will make you both feel a lot safer and grounded in the relationship. So I recommend boundary discussions and all relationships. This is from Grant, 43, in Montana. Hey, Dr. Emily. We've been married for nearly 20 years and we both had instances of online infidelity about five years ago and we haven't had sex since. Our sex life was great before we got married, but it went downhill right after. I definitely want to start again and I mention it from time to time, but really don't know how to approach a conversation. Can you help me? Oh, Grant, five years is a long time to go without having sex in a relationship. On top of the fact, let me just mention this, sounds like the sex hasn't been that great. You said it was great right before you got married, which was 20 years ago. So for 20 years, you haven't had the most satisfying sexual relationship with your partner. And so without having sexual intimacy in this relationship that is actually connecting and pleasurable for you both, you know, how are we going to begin this relationship again? And I understand you're asking me how to do it, because it is not easy to have these conversations, and casually mentioning it from time to time, like you said, is just not going to work. And remember that relationships are more about repair than perfection. And they're more about how you guys come back together. And it Sounds like for 20 years, there's been some work that needs to be done. So I highly recommend that you both, if you both agree that you want to work on it. Going back to my points earlier, if you've both agreed that you want to work on the relationship and you want to be together, then I think that therapy would be excellent for you both to find a trusted Counselor. Because for 20 years, you're not going to be able to undo a lot of the patterns that you're in right now. You're having the same patterns of fighting and the same patterns of disagreements and even the same patterns of not having sex. So if you both have agreed that you want to work on it and your sex life and your intimate life and your relationship is important, then I highly recommend therapy on a regular basis, once a week, for at least three months, maybe six months, to help you guys rebuild the relationship. Because it is so crucial that you get some help in this area. Remember, you are not alone when this happens in a relationship. You know, there's a lot of trauma and betrayal as well. I just want to mention that. So much so that therapists are now turning to treatments for infidelity to treat the shock. It is a shock. It's pain, it's fear, and it's so destabilizing. And so I just want to say that, like, all these things are, you know, if you've been through an affair or cheating in your relationship, it's a trauma. And therapy will help you. You know, I love EMDR therapy. You can find more about it emdrea.org Emdria.org is an excellent resource. I've talked about it a lot on the show. It actually helps rewire your brain around the trauma. This is from Jake, 30, in California. Hey, Dr. Emily. I am married to my lovely wife. I am 30 and she's 37. We have two kids together. I've always felt more sexually open than her, and I consider myself about a 2.5 on the Kinsey scale. She's under the impression that I'm a zero or a one. I want to experience more sex in my life. I wish I hadn't gotten married so young because I hadn't really explored any of my gay desires. My wife's against porn, think guys are gay if they want a prostate massage. And now she has a low sex drive. I've been chatting with guys online and even went to a bathhouse just to feel that nervous, excited sexual energy again. I even masturbated with another male in the room together. It was so hot to be with someone. Am I totally out of luck? I love my wife and my kids, but I feel like my sex life is doomed. She doesn't ever want to mix it up. It's to the point where I fantasize she is someone else when I'm having sex with her from behind. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I love your show. I want to try and get my wife to listen to it, but I don't know how to even go about that without her being weird. She won't talk about sex with me. She always rolls her eyes and gets upset. I've tried setting time to talk, telling her this is important, but the problem is she never talks to me about what she wants. Ugh. Please help. I'm worried that I have to find happiness by cheating on her and I don't want it to come to that. All right. Thank you so much, Jake, for your vulnerability and your honesty in this email. This sounds like you're going through a lot and my heart goes out to you. This is not easy to deal with in any relationship and there's just a lot of unresolved issues here and miscommunication or lack of communication in your relationship. You feel so sexually unfulfilled that you want to go out and cheat. I understand what you're saying here about your partner not wanting to talk to you about it. And you have two kids. She's busy and you're busy. But I just want to reinforce this for you and for everyone that it is crucial. It's just as important as getting your health checked, going to the dentist, getting your car checked. It is so crucial that you learn to practice healthy communication. And you talk about your. The state of your relationship and your sex life, your vulnerabilities. Often it's not a one time thing. None of this is. It's like once we get over the awkward part of like, well, I don't know how to say this and I don't know you know, my partner won't do it. I mean, I think this is grounds for, like, really serious. Like, if your partner says, I will not talk to you about our sex life, I will not talk to you about a relationship, I will not go to therapy. Essentially they're saying, this relationship is not important to me. I'm going to draw a line in the sand here. Now, I also think that they're saying that because they don't understand the importance of it because, listen, most of us grew up in homes where there was no talk about any emotions, any feelings, any vulnerabilities. We never saw our parents talk about it. So how would we know how to do this? Well, we don't. And that's why I have the show and that's why a lot of you email me and we talk about this stuff because it is hard. This is challenging. It is so hard to not only find a partner who wants to talk about it, but once you find that partner, how do we have these conversations without being so judgmental and hurt? You know, using contempt and being angry. That's a practice too, to learn how to like, non violently communicate with our partners. So let me just say that I understand where you're at. Jake isn't easy, but first we got to get her to listen. So maybe something you could say to her is, I don't know how you've tried it in the past. I have a great guide on my website@sexwithemily.com it is our three T's of communication and it is an excellent guide to get you started. Because maybe you were trying to have the conversations at a time that wasn't quite right. Like, maybe it was after she came home from work and she was exhausted, or maybe it was, you know, you were frustrated about something and you just lobbed it on. And we never have sex, you know, or we never talk about things. So the time that you do it by timing, tone and turf formula is you gotta pick the right time, you gotta use the right tone. It can't be defensive and demanding and judgmental. It has to be like, hey, I know I've said this to you before, but I really am feeling now this strain in our relationship. I love you. You're my life partner. I really think we need to find time. Is there a good time for you? Can we do it Saturday night? We have a babysitter. Can we do it on our morning walk? Let's do it at dinner, you know, figure out the right time and then turf again. If you're having Issues in the bedroom. I always recommend don't do it in the bedroom, do it outside the bedroom. But in your case, Jake, just find a place that you feel safe and comfortable. Now, when you have this conversation with her, you also have to share with her that you have these desires for men. There's no way you're going to last in this relationship, Jake, if you're not honest with her. Now, I don't know that you lead with it on the first talk because remember, this is not a one time conversation. You're going to have these conversations every week, hopefully for the rest of your relationship. Because let me paint a picture for y'. All. It gets easier. You tend to crave these relationships because the relationship feels dirty without them. You're like, we haven't cleansed what we did this week that didn't make each other feel good. And like, you will learn to flip this. It's like learning to like, exercise. I don't know if anyone ever like hated exercise. And then you got into routine and then your body craved it. You're like, I need to work out or meditation. You know, I need to meditate every day. That's what happens with these conversations. So if you want, Jake, getting into therapy and finding a trusted counselor would also be excellent for you both. You've been together a while and you have kids. Having a couple's therapist can really help you have a healthy conversation. So you're both using like language that you both understand. It's almost like you have to develop a new language around communication in your relationship. It's a whole new thing that can be really hard to develop when it's just the two of you coming from the place you're coming from. So I would say first just say, I want to talk about our intimacy. Let's talk about the state of our relationship. Is there anything that you've been wanting? You could talk about your desire for, you know, more sex and how you want sex. But just know this is going to take some time, Jake. It's not just you staying or going. It's not you being gay or straight. It's about if you want to stay with your partner. And it sounds like you do. And also you want to still explore any of your bisexual tendencies or gay tendencies. And I think that also exists. It's really hard to just say, I'm not gonna pay attention to that. Also, it would be important for her to know now. Again, you might wanna talk to a therapist first and figure this out on your own. And it sounds like you believe that your wife has some judgments around, you know, like gay culture or you being a zero. So again, the relationship now is based on some secrecy, and secrecy is really toxic. Secrecy is different than privacy. Privacy is like, no, I just don't feel like sharing this conversation I had with my friend or my therapist with my partner. That's okay. That's privacy. But secrecy is something that we spend a lot of time trying to cover up. We're constantly trying to, like, cover up the secret and make tell lies, have people lie for us or lie on our own. That's when it becomes a problem. And remember, we're only as sick as our secrets. And if we have a lot of secrets, we feel sick in our relationship and honor our relationship. So however you do this, Jake, I'm really sending you so much love, Jake. And at 30 years old, you deserve to have the kind of sex life and relationship that you want. And so does your wife. So here's to some healthy conversations together. Thanks for your email.

That's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday. Thanks for thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to, like, subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Exwithemily.

Oh, I've been told I give really good email.

So sign up@sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating or relationships, call.

My hotline 559-TALK SEX.

That's 559-825-5739 or go to sexwithemily.com askemily Special thanks to Acast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedbackexwithemily.com.

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