Infidelity, Betrayal, and Affair Recovery: What Actually Helps Couples Heal

Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And this is my last recording of the podcast in London because as of tomorrow I moved to Thailand for 2 months. So I'm very excited about that. I just wanted, although it makes no difference to anybody where I'm located, because obviously all this is, is my voice and we don't normally share the video. So, but you know, I'm just saying that right now I'm freezing cold and hopefully as of couple of days' time, I won't be. But the woman that I'm with is clearly not cold because she's wearing a sleeveless top, and her name is Ranelle Nelson, and she's a licensed marriage and family therapist. She's a certified sex therapist, and she's an infidelity recovery coach, and she's been doing that for over a decade, for 11 years. And I really want to talk about infidelity because it's something that we don't speak about too often. On the podcast. I've read, um, Esther Perel's State of Affairs, which we can have a little chat about, Purnell. And I'm always just curious about infidelity, cuz I don't know if you agree with me. I think infidelity can be an opportunity to repair a relationship that has gone awry, but welcome.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

So what's your— actually, let's start from the beginning. What does infidelity mean to to you?

So infidelity to me is— can be different forms. So I say infidelity can be anytime you go outside of, um, your relationship to get pleasure. Um, and this is just what I say, a lot of people don't agree with this, but I could think infidelity can be person, place, or thing. You know, it's money infidelities, it's all kind of communication infidelities. And then it's affairs, you know, that's when you have sex outside of the relationship. Right now, sex can be said, or virtual AI, um, texting. So that span has got good. But I kind of like to, um, coin myself as like working with betrayals, because betrayals are those silent contracts that you think you signed and you didn't until they broke it. So I like to tell people, I say infidelity, but I'm leaning more towards betrayals affairs being a type of betrayal that I work with because working with couples, I work with all types of betrayals.

Yeah, and I think that when people have been often in long-term relationships, as a lot of older couples have, it can be so difficult to maintain sexual desire, for example, right, within those relationships. And so sometimes it's not uncommon I suspect, for people to stray. Do you happen to know what the stats are around that? Because I suspect they're pretty significant.

You know what, I really don't know the stats per se exactly, but I can let you know that in my caseload, who I'm seeing, that it's equal in men and women. It's been like that for a while, but I just like to say to people, it's just not a male sport anymore. Women are also having types of betrayals that I'm seeing more of.

Yeah, and I think that we're reading, we're hearing more about older women especially leaving marriages and being happy because a lot of the emotional labor falls upon them. And so sometimes sex with somebody else is a chance to just escape that domesticity.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of gray divorces. Um, you see a lot of gray divorces. You see a lot of people once they raise their children, empty nesters, when they first had their grandkids and they just like, okay, my work is done now. I can find myself. You know, we raised our family. What next? So we have the ones who might want to renew after decades or people who want to separate and grow after decades. Yeah.

And with the couples that you meet where there has been some form of betrayal, do they come to see you primarily, I suspect, because they want to repair the marriage?

Yes. Yes. The majority of my clients on my caseload are coming in for affair aftercare, or what I like to say— well, that's what I say, affair aftercare— or because they want the tools and support and education because they want to stay and rebuild trust and safety, but they just don't know how. So I just guide them on that.

And how do you do that?

I think affair recovery and traditional marriage therapy is different, and I know I get a lot of slack for saying that, and that's because I just feel it is. In my line of work, I hear— I've been honored to work with, um, designer relationships, where polyamory, uh, quads, polyquad, all kinds of different stuff. And I just, just was learning. I'm like, no matter if you have relationship satisfaction, if you have an unmet need, a characteristic, a wound, that's where the affair come in at. It has— I have so many people, and I know it's disheartening, but to me, this is what I'm seeing. People love their partner and they can betray, or people can blame their partner and betray. It depends on the characteristic. But the reason why I separated is just because you have a bad relationship, everybody who have bad marriages do not cheat. So sometimes people go in and say restructure the marriage, and I'm like, more conversations, more sex, more just whatever is not going to stop betrayal. The only thing to me to stop betrayal is communication and not wanting to do it. Right. So that's why when I work with people, we have the affair recovery, which we talk about the affair. Who did they become? Um, what is it that they want and need so we can get that out of them, the person who betrayed? Because it's hard to go back in a relationship and you can't heal what you can't reveal. So I can't go in and say, talk to your partner more, do like this more, when it was just like they— we had to hear from them what happened. And even though that the partner that stayed in a relationship is not, um, wasn't the result, cause of the affair, they need healing too. So I had to bring no blame approach, that the person who went outside the marriage deserves healing and the person who stayed in the marriage deserves healing. And then once we get that fundamental foundation set, then we can look at the marriage. Now the person who stayed in the marriage not responsible for the affair, but they are responsible for their part in the marriage. And then we focus on that. And so that's how I do it, because I can't— it's hard to heal affair with just more talking and more tasks. You got to kind of get to the root of it.

Yeah, because clearly, you know, I've been, I've been a person that hasn't been faithful, and I've also been a person to whom someone else was not faithful. So I've seen both sides of it. And I think that there's, you know, from my perspective, part of it is about something's lacking within the existing relationship. So I'm not— you're not getting some need met. Your needs aren't being fully met. Sometimes I suspect there's just a desire for newness and that kind of first date energy that you get when you meet somebody and you have some, something, some spark, something that feels different, right? You come alive, you come alive, you know, and that's hard to maintain over a very long period of time. I, I think, you know, um, I know obviously lots of people do do it, but I, I also know that lots of people stray either with the consent of their partner or without the consent of their partner. I mean, are there, are there times where you get to a point where you, where the couple that you're working with agrees that actually it's okay for that person to go outside and do stuff?

You know what, yeah, no, that, that really don't work out, Suzanne Noble, that really don't work out because if you are familiar with any designer relationship or anything that is more than two, that dyad has already a solid foundation. Foundation. It's not because of betrayal. So we starting this journey on a lie, right? And a lot of times that the, um, person who stayed didn't want that. They just settled for that because they can't keep the other person at home. So I saw, and you know, I witnessed those, where those relationships where they opened them up, it just don't work out all the time because it comes more— we can't communicate with us and talk about our wants, needs, and desires? How are we going to talk about adding one and two more people in? How are we going to talk about the real details of that? And that's what they don't talk about— jealousy, falling in love, protected sex. We don't talk about all that stuff in the diaspora. How can we open it up and think we're gonna have this, um, better conversation?

Yeah, no, I, I completely agree with you. I mean, the people that I know that have done that, as you said, they've done it within a consensual totally solid relationship where there was, there was no cheating that went on before. It was just, look, there's some stuff I'd really like to explore. Would you like to explore this with me? And the other person said, not really, I don't really want to do that. You know, things like kink, for example, which oftentimes doesn't include what people would call typical sort of penetrative sex, right?

Right.

These sort of impact play or something else that's completely just of interest to the other party.

Correct. And they're just like, yeah, go and get whipped and, you know, now that consensual to go outside of that, I have witnessed that where I'm just not into it, but I consent to you doing that. But again, that's a discussion beforehand, not after. And it's just, and then it's still a lot of trust building, right? Because I trust you to just do that. And some people can even join or just witness it, but I think that's even a conversation So I think the theme here is that communication.

Yeah, it's the theme of every episode of this podcast, every single one. And if I was to roll up 2025 and the, you know, however many interviews I've done, which is a lot, I think this is like 180-some-odd.

Wow.

I would say that every episode is comes down to how well or not so well one communicates with their partner, you know, and I think what people fail to understand and why I love doing this so much is that when you work with someone that is an expert in whatever area you're looking to, you know, explore within your own relationship, whether it's you know, moving it beyond two people, whether it's betrayal or whatever, if you don't have the tools to know how to communicate with your partner, it's very difficult to sort that shit out.

It's very difficult. I used to say communication— so me, I say communication is like lubrication. You put it on there, everything slides so smoothly. So I'm a couples therapist, so I pushed that and then I didn't because communication wasn't the key anymore. It was emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is the key so you can communicate and so you can hear. So I just juxtaposed, whatever that word is, the two and just flipped it. I think that you have to be able to regulate your emotions, regulate your body so you can hear, to be able to hear the conversation, and communicate effectively because I kept pushing communication, communication, and all my clients say they have a communication problem and they don't. They have a comprehension problem. They not understanding stuff. They don't want to listen. They're not getting their way. I say, y'all are communicating well, right? They like, what do you mean? I'm like, tell me 3 things that y'all argue. They can name it off of everything. I say, see, that communication is not the problem. It's accepting influence, it's listening, it's getting rid of the power control and you, uh, regulating your whole emotions so you can even follow up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's very true. Do you think that— look, when, when you— when someone is cheating or has been cheated on, how many of those relationships that with the couples that you work with, how many of those relationships survive?

I will say 70% I have. It's very unfortunate, but sometimes because we put our relationships on autopilot, sometimes that affair wakes it up. Very painful way to wake it up. And that's why I do a lot of preventative work with premarital and my couples. I always do, um, how to avoid you know, but nobody's immune to affairs. I said just how to look out for them and don't let them seep in. But I would just say it is that percent, and at the end people be like, you know, I'm sorry that it had to come to this, but I'm glad we went through this. And some— and then the regular percent say they just can't get over it, you know, they can't get over it, it changed the relationship forever. So either they stay just to carry out something or stay because they don't have anything else to do, but the relationship is never the same.

Yeah.

And—

Or they leave. Or they leave.

Yeah, or they leave. Yeah, I mean, but when they say the relationship will never be the same, the relationship will never be the same, right? Because as you say, there's a lack of— the trust has been lost, and that's integral to any relationship. If you don't trust the person, then And frankly, that's for me, that's, you know, 90% of it. You have to trust your partner and, and, and, and understand that. But if the trust is gone, then repairing that trust can be very difficult. Just changing the subject slightly. Um, you know, as you said at the beginning, people can betray their partner in so many different ways. And one of the things I hear a lot from the people that follow me is about their relationship with porn. And I hear a lot from women who say that their husband's not interested in sex anymore, and they've discovered that they're watching too much porn. How do you view porn?

That's a— this is a prickly topic. I mean, being a sex therapist, I think it's different forms of adult entertainment. You know, I think it's some beautiful work out here by women directors and just people who very circle. And I think because it gets categorized as porn, you know, uh, people afraid for it. But some people would not know how to have sex, what it looked like, or get educated. So it's, it's a, it's bittersweet. And I understand the consent, especially that sets up a real unrealistic fantasy, um, and put something like that and somebody who goes in it and looking for education or entertainment or arousal. I think porn can be anything you want it to be. And it is hard when some people, um, especially some men who was raised on some kind of pornographic material, that that is their way of getting that outside arousal, and it's just more of a habit. And I know right now, would it be easily accessible? But now we have like the AI bots, and a lot of people— that's what I'm saying. Well, porn is a conversation I have a lot with my clients because I have to ask, what does porn mean to them? And I don't think, um, the majority I'm hearing that they don't care about it is when it affects their sex life. Like you saying that we know that chronic masturbation can desensitize the penis, and so they get in there and it's nothing, and it's easier. And then a relationship satisfaction, it's easy to go in there and look at this and get off real quick than having to hear your mom buy you dinner, go through that. It's just a fantasy. So I hear different people. So I think that it's a prickly conversation, but a conversation that needs to be had and nobody is having it. It's just, um, defended or arguing about it. So yeah, I agree.

I mean, yeah. And I think there, you know, I, I, I gave a talk recently in a hospital to a bunch of junior GPs and they, we were talking about We're just talking about intimacy in older adults. And, you know, one of the things obviously is that there are people that perhaps have never, you know, porn came into their life later.

And so I'm seeing women that are saying, you know, I'm not getting any, or because he's just jerking off all the time in watching this, you know, and, and how can I stop that? And what can I do about that? Because it's really impacting on our relationship. And then on the flip side of that, Allie, who is the doctor, when I said, you know, I think porn can be addictive and I think it can be destructive. And she said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Porn is just this thing over here. And some people can dip in and out of it.

Yeah.

And it's fine. It's fine. It doesn't, it doesn't change their relationship. Some people can get hooked on it and then it's not fine. But we can't, we can't generally create a blanket statement that says all of it is bad because for some people it's okay. And yeah, you know, and so I feel about it too. Yeah. I mean, I'm a little bit more of the, I'm not sure how okay it is personally because I've gotten wrapped up in it myself. And had to kind of distance myself from it because it's easy to get off and it just, you know, sometimes it's hard to get off as an older woman.

And I'm thinking, and I think that is another thing, is, is porn is just like you going to the casino. It's the lights, the noise, the action, the constant thing. And you take that and then look at your partner just laying there and say, hurry up. You're gonna always gonna go with what gives you pleasure. And I think that we should have that conversation. Nobody wants to— you want to invite— that's why people say it's a lack of desire. Nobody gonna desire boring sex. So even though we think pussy is power, pussy can be boring too, right? You know, we think like you can just bust it open and just lay there and say, 'Hurry up,' and the man's supposed to be turned on. We don't— we don't give any stimuli, nothing visual, nothing any like that. And I'm not blaming women, and I'm not blaming men. I'm blaming the relationship we have with intimacy and arousal. We don't discuss it, we assume it. So we think everything gonna be like we just saw on porn and we get our hopes up high. We don't discuss, hey, I need this, I want this. And I think that comparison is a trap because that leads to comparison and not a discussion. And that leaves us 9 times out of 10 not doing it.

Yeah, 150%. Absolutely. And you know, and that's certainly what I hear. I mean, as somebody who's older, you know, yourself, not, you know, you're 50-some-odd, you look gorgeous. Do, how do you deal with mismatched libidos and how much of that comes into this whole issue around betrayal?

Okay, so my thing is, just like we talking about porn, like we talk about betrayal, you can take that word out and interchange it with anything else. So when you tell me mismatched libidos, I think about living with a vegan and a carnivore. How do they make it work? They co-create a reality. It's just like, how do we make anything work? Why does it— when it comes to sex, it's the dun dun dun, we don't match libido? Because we take that from not porn, romance, the stuff we see on regular TV. We get excited and we doing all that. So people think that unison equal intimacy. But as we know, sometimes it do. But as we get older— not even older, sometimes we don't— everybody don't get pleasure from sex. Yeah. And when we normalize that, then we can let go of that mishmash desire. I don't always have to want to have sex with you because you always want to have sex with me. Sometimes I am going to have sex with you because I get pleasure from pleasing you, right? So I think that's the conversation too, because society set that up. Not porn. Society set that up. We fall in love, you know, we coming at the same time. Society set up these barriers and tainted our relationships that make us think that something is wrong with us. So just like I gave you the example is, what happen if me and my partner go to a buffet? We don't eat the same, but we eat together, right? So I think it's part of a compromise. And what does that look like? I have people who get more pleasure from conversation than penetration. So what they do, they go on a date first, or they have sex first. It's called co-creation. And I think we blame libidos because we don't want to have the conversation. And yes, it is, especially being perimenopausal, um, I can understand that, um, medical issues, uh, losing a desire, everything like that. And I think we lose it, but we so concerned about what we lost We don't recreate. And that's how it is feel like being over 50, knowing that I can recreate, nothing's wrong with me. And I think that's the freedom.

Yeah, it's certainly also, there's, there's an element, certainly there was for me about, cause I'm 64 now, there was an element for me about having to let go of a lot of the stuff that I was capable of doing sexually when I was younger because my body's different, things are different, and it's not going back, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that took some degree of grieving and just getting used to it. Also just telling myself that I could still be a sexual person even though I didn't have that screaming, raging horniness that I used to have when I was a younger woman where I just, you know, if I was I just wanted to have sex with them all the time. Now I'm, you know, I don't have that need as I, as I did. And that took— and, and as a person who's not with somebody in that way, I think it's, it's challenging when you've been in a long-term relationships and you've been, like you said, you know, just rocking along in the way that you do, thinking it's all good. And then suddenly changes in your body start to happen and suddenly you have to accommodate that and you maybe We don't know how, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I think anything— I, um, I'm in so many perimenopausal and menopausal groups, and a lot of ladies, either they super horny because we all on, on T, right? We own our testosterone, or test— yeah, or everybody lost the libido. And I always come in and say, you know, desire is your mind, you know, and libido is your body. I was like, it's not just gonna happen even though we take all the pills and we throw some lube in it. You have to be intentional. And it's just not when to act. So I would just say, like, I, uh, suggest to my individuals when I do, uh, sex coaching for individuals and women is you have to feel sexy. You have to intentionally seek out to feel sexy. You got to intentionally do stuff to feel arousal without your partner, because we can't put our pleasure in somebody else's hand. So when I lost my libido, I said, you didn't lose it, you're just not focused on Right, and you got to be intentional. Just like you get older, we got to be intentional with our vaginal care. You know, we didn't take care, but now we got to put the lube. We don't want to tear. Everything is intentional now to sustain, right? So I just think when I hear that, I'm like, okay, so let's focus on what you can do now. Like you said, and we had that grief and we let go or we released but we can also explore and enhance. And I think once we started looking for that, I think that it'd be better. But I blame society for a lot of stuff.

Well, it's easy. It's easy to blame society.

I blame society. I—

yeah, I mean, I think that society has a lot to answer for, but I think that, uh, unfortunately there's nobody's door that we can knock on and just say, hey, society, can you just like, you know, get on it? Yeah, get over it.

But I do see a change with the younger generation. I think the younger generation, um, is more, uh, they just like new age hippies, some of them. You like, they just like reincarnated, like, with, um, being fluid, loving who they want, you know, not choosing not to have sex, celebrating celibacy, you know, you know, everybody's not— they're not having kids. You know, I think it's going to be new and sex is part of the conversation. I think they kind of reframing a lot of stuff, so I'll be interested in how that lands. But I'm seeing more forward advances coming in my practice too, that they just, they okay with it.

That's really good to hear. I mean, I'm in the UK and I think the US is much more on board with going to therapists, exploring how they can enhance their relationships through using sex therapists and no other forms of therapy. I don't see it quite so much in the UK. I still think there's quite a stigma attached to going, hmm, help. So I, I don't think that we've turned that corner yet. Certainly not here. I think what I'm seeing is that There's definitely amongst a certain cohort of people, young people, enthusiasm for exploring different kinds of relationships, different kinds of be— ways of being, and being really open and honest with others about their intentions around that. And I see that with my own kids who are in their 30s. I see that they are, one in particular is much more engaged with making sure that he's as open and transparent and honest with anyone he meets as possible to be, because he feels that he wants to start those relationships in the best possible place. And that all that work that he's done is going to help him to be able to do that. And I think that, and I think that I don't see too much of that going on with my own generation, if I'm really honest. And I always say to people now when they say, well, you know, if you were to get into a relationship again, what would your first piece of advice be? And I'd say it would be to go and probably have 6 sessions with a therapist, with a sex therapist, you know, just to start. Like, look, if we're going to take— do be serious about this, like, we have to be able to put all our cards on the table and make sure that we move forward in the best possible way.

Yeah.

You know, because—

and I see that more, just for let you know, I have more couples dating that coming in that been together a month, 2 months, less than a year. And they— and I was like, okay, well, bring you here. They say, we want to do it right. We just want to learn how to communicate. And I'm like, wow, that's a big change. I'm like, that's really proactive. And I really do that. And they say, based on past relationships or their, um, historical relationships with anything caregivers, that they want to do it right. Because they say we never was, um, taught. So therapy is now taking away— therapy is more education and everything like that. Especially when I see a lot of, um, young kids, uh, changing religions, you know, changing religions, and now they leave the religious belief and now they want to learn and explore. That is another big thing also.

Yeah.

And I think that's amazing. You know, and I suspect it's so— it makes it so much easier as a couple when you do hit a bumpy road, a bumpy patch in the road, to be able to recover than, you know, a relationship that's 30 years in where again, you've had some element of betrayal, no communication skills whatsoever. You've never talked about sex. You've just kind of assumed everything was okay until it's not. And then, and then you got a lot of, a lot of work to do. Um, which clearly keeps people like you in business for a much, much longer period of, much longer period of time. Give me those, give me those long-term massively, you know, unhappy people.

And that's the thing, I think, I think that's a change too. A lot of, um, because how I present myself. I see more couples coming in for enhancement, and I think therapy— everybody— and plus, I don't specialize in high conflict. It's so many other people to that. So I think just my word and stuff, I'm just seeing a lot of the couples who want to come in for that exploration, enhancement, education, and excitement. So that is— so that's my— that's my ideal clients right now.

Perfect. You heard it here first. If that's what you want. Excitement and what was it? Enhancement.

I meant enhancement, exploration, and education.

Ooh, eroticism.

Eroticism. We, we gotta keep the eroticism in it because that's what's missing in a lot of relationships is that eroticism is gone, right?

Yeah.

And that's why we go to porn.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we need to talk more about that. Eroticism leaves our relationship and that's what porn gives this.

Very, very, very true. That is, that's very true. But we don't need to work, you know, like you said, if you've got the erotic in your relationship, that's, you know, as Esther Perel says, distance breeds desire and mystery is at the heart of the good relationship, right? There has to always be some element of mystery and the unknown and all of that juicy stuff that keeps people's juices flowing.

Yeah. When you think you know it all, that means you dried up. You're not getting hard or wet.

What a great way to end the show. Yeah. You don't have that. You're all dried up.

All dried up.

It's been so lovely to talk to you and have a lovely day in Arizona.

Thank you.

Like usual, I'll be publishing where everyone can find you, Ranelle. And if you're looking to enhance, educate, excite and maintain the erotic in your relationship. She's your gal.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me.