How Esther Perel offers a Master Class in Holding Cheaters Accountable

Esther Perel can be polarizing among us betrayed spouses. At least at first.
For one thing, she responds to the unfaithful partner with compassion, something we're loathe to see. We want to see the unfaithful partner drawn and quartered, strung up and humiliated. Compassion? That should be for us, not them! But yes, she has plenty of compassion for us, too.
So, if you can manage it, listen to this recent podcast episode. It features a couple in which the guy is a serial cheater. The wife knows. She is working to forgive. But the husband feels unready to cut ties with the Other Woman.
And though Perel doesn't respond with an eyeroll or a "puh-leeze" or a "JFC, are you kidding me?", she nonetheless calls this guy out. And that's her magic. She calls him out in a way that allows his eyes to open rather than his heart to close.
Consider: 
You see yourself as a good person but you’re not doing good things and you keep trying to close the gap.
Perel makes clear that these guys who are worried about the impact on the Other Woman, or, in the case of the man on her podcast, the impact on the woman's son (he had been the child of a single mother who saw himself in this boy), are lying to themselves, as well as to everyone else. But she doesn't call him a liar. She says, you see yourself as a good person. Yes, he does. A lot of these guys do. They're often as baffled as the rest of us how they got themselves into a situation that, to pretty much everyone else, makes them look like NOT good guys. 
...but you're not doing good things... 
We all know by now, if you've been reading this blog or Encyclopedia for the Betrayed or any number of other books or reputable blog posts, that cheaters are masterful storytellers. And the person they're mostly telling stories to is themselves. They don't always realize it. In fact, part of coming clean after infidelity is recognizing the stories they've told themselves. Stories like, "nobody appreciates me", or "I work so hard and get nothing in return" or even vague, amorphous stories about how life/work/family just isn't what they thought it would be. And so when someone shows up and pays attention to these guys, listens to their stories, it's intoxicating. They want it to continue. It can feel like a drug. Besides, they tell themselves another story, nobody needs to get hurt. ...but you're not doing good things... That's pretty much cold water on the "nobody gets hurt" story. Because people do get hurt. They are devastated. They are traumatized. Besides, Perel points out, even if nobody finds out ...you're not doing good things. So if you consider yourself a good guy but...you're not doing good things..., well, then,  how do you square that circle? You don't. Not until your actions are aligned with your declared values. 

And consider this too:
You may leave this marriage, you may stay in this marriage, but you still wouldn’t understand squat.
How many of us are beseeched to "let it go", "move forward", "stop dwelling in the past". As if that's the problem. As if everything would be fine if we could just overlook that teensy indiscretion (that might have gone on for years), or move past those lies that made us think we were crazy. And that's Perel's point here. Without interrogating the infidelity, without examining the stories they were telling themselves, anyone who cheated isn't going to learn a damn thing, whether they stay or go. The key, she insists, is to understand the why of the infidelity. What were they looking for that they didn't think they could get inside the marriage? What lies were they believing about what they were doing that kept them neither inside nor outside the marriage but straddling this delusional line? That's where the healing will be found. Or perhaps not the healing per se but the finger pointing towards the healing. 

And, finally, consider this:
I think you might get more from understanding the meaning than the facts.
Wow, huh? A whole lotta these guys spend their time citing the facts of theirinfidelity rather than the meaning. Why? Well, it's a whole lot easier to catalogue (honestly or otherwise) the number of times they slept with her, or the name of the restaurant they took her to, or the times they told her that they never planned on leaving their marriage. So much harder to understand the meaning behind those actions. Like Perel's comment above, infidelity tells us a whole lot about ourselves, some of it none too flattering. And looking in that metaphorical mirror can feel excruciating. Owning the ways in which we betrayed people we care about is painful. But, as Perel points out, it's necessary if we're going to move forward in a way that takes us toward a deeper, more meaningful relationship. 

That, ultimately, is Perel's goal. Not (never!) to let people off the hook for bad behaviour but to guide them toward a deeper understanding of themselves. To show them that they can be a good person who does a bad thing but they need to acknowledge that bad thing and  stop doing it. That in order to choose to be in a marriage or out of it, they need to respond rather than react. They need to make a conscious choice rooted in respect for their partner and themselves. Shame doesn't get us there. Hard work tempered by compassion does. That work is theirs, of course. It is not our job to fix them or point them toward understanding. It is our job to set clear boundaries, do what we can to keep ourselves physically and emotionally safe and learn how to trust ourselves. And that, too, must come from compassion. There's enough to go around.

What If You Shifted The Story You're Telling Yourself

Driving my daughter to march in our local Pride Parade this past weekend, I flipped on the car radio. Esther Perel's voice, one I recognize from long hours listening to her incredible podcast Where Should We Begin, filled the car. She was being interviewed about relationships (duh!). But she told more of her backstory than I've heard before. About how both of her parents were the only surviving members of their families after Hitler's reign of terror. About growing up in Antwerp, surrounded by other survivors of the Holocaust. And she noticed something that set her on the course of her life – helping us find connection with each other. What she noticed was that there were two groups of people (not neatly delineated, she pointed out) that each told a story. One group told stories of victimization – what had been done to them. The other told stories of survival – what they themselves had done. She noticed something else. For those who perceived themselves as victims, she said, the most you could say about them was that they weren't dead. But those who perceived themselves as survivors? They were alive.

Not dead vs. alive. See the difference?

Betrayal isn't the Holocaust. But, as Perel insists, trauma is trauma and all pain is legitimate. 

Of course, betrayal isn't the whole of our story. We bring plenty of baggage into all our relationships. Baggage about our worth. Baggage about love. Baggage about expectations. Baggage about entitlement.

But betrayal can also blow our stories wide open, it can give us the opportunity to re-examine what we've been telling ourselves. It can allow us to rewrite. Because stories are not set in stone. They are always ALWAYS a story, narrated by someone who has bias.
How might your story be different if you framed it as a story of survival, of triumph, rather than a story of being victimized. As Laura, the founder of Infidelity Counseling Network, told me: Her healing began the day the she changed the question from 'why did this happen to me?' to 'why did this happen?'
I have zero doubt that you can just as easily tell all of us here about the ways in which you're a hero. Getting out of bed, for a start. Not murdering your husband in his sleep. Taking care of children, sometimes children with special needs, when your heart is shattered. Checking in with elderly parents. Continuing to get yourself to work. Not risking your sobriety. Not spending money you don't have on temporary fixes. Making dinner. Doing laundry. Remembering your best friend's birthday.
Stories of your ingenuity, of your resilience, of your goodness and your integrity. Stories of carrying on even when it's so damn hard. Stories of survival. Stories that will move you toward feeling alive rather than just not dead.
Try it. Tell us a story of something you did that felt really really hard but you did it anyway. Let us all celebrate your aliveness.
And then, let's all of us make it a habit. I want to be more than just not dead. I bet you do too.