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Infidelity isn’t just about sex: Couples therapist has one piece of advice she often gives

Is it infidelity when you're absorbed by someone other than your partner?

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"When infidelity comes up with a couple who are in therapy with me, it’s judgement day in my office," says couples therapist and psychologist Sissel Gran. Here together with psychology professor Ole André Solbakken.
Gro Lien Garbo COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER
Presented by: Presented by: University of Oslo
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Do you spend hours chatting with a new or former flame and constantly have that person on your mind?

Then you are engaging in emotional infidelity, according to experts in the field.

It can start so innocently. An ex or a former colleague you had good chemistry with finds you on social media. 

You start messaging. 

You feel a bit of excitement. 

At home, one day is just like the next, full of logistics and children. 

A little spice in everyday life can’t hurt, right?

Such a relationship will threaten your actual partner

“If you get excited by this ‘spice’ and invite more contact with the source of that spice, then the experience becomes far too intense for your relationship,” says Ole André Solbakken.

He is a professor at the University of Oslo's Department of Psychology and a specialist in human emotions and relationships.

Solbakken has no doubt that the relationship you enter into when you establish contact with a new or old flame will threaten your actual partner.

The professor’s clear advice is to stop investing in this new contact before the relationship accelerates any further. 

Otherwise, you are playing a high-stakes game with your committed partner, he believes.

If you start falling for someone, run away

Sissel Gran is a psychologist, author, and often referred to as Norway’s couples therapist. 

She emphasises that close, intimate contact with someone who makes your heart race – and who is not your partner – is playing with fire. Especially if you are in a somewhat vulnerable state.

“If things in your committed relationship are a bit difficult and you also feel a bit raw, less vital, and long to feel more alive – then you are extra vulnerable. If you start to feel a bit tender and like you might be falling in love, I usually give one piece of advice, and that is: ‘Run away’,” says Gran.

She stresses that the same level of risk is not present if you are generally happy with your life and your relationship. 

In that case, you might allow yourself a bit of back-and-forth with an admirer and then stop it, before it spirals out of control.

This is the professor's definition of infidelity

Ole André Solbakken agrees.

“When you suddenly become preoccupied with someone other than your steady partner, it all depends on what you do with it. A feeling is something that happens to us. We cannot choose or prevent our feelings," he says.

But we have a great deal of freedom when it comes to how we handle them, he adds.

The professor has a clear definition of what he means by the word infidelity.

“To violate your partner’s expectations of emotional, romantic, or sexual exclusivity by doing with someone else what the two people in the relationship have explicitly or implicitly agreed to do only with each other," he says. 

You break with what allows your partner to feel like the one, special and unique person for you. In that way, you threaten the foundation of the relationship, he elaborates.

It's about being replaced

When the professor strips infidelity down to its core, it's about the feeling of being replaced.

“You are no longer the chosen one. Someone else is threatening to take your place, or is in the process of doing so. That's the very heart of infidelity,” says Solbakken.

Sissel Gran agrees.

“Infidelity – whether sexual, emotional, or both – is one of the things most people in a relationship are most afraid of,” she says.

Judgment day in the therapy room

Gran refers to the Norwegian therapist Esther Perel, who has called infidelity ‘the mother of all betrayals.’ Those are powerful words.

The couples therapist finds it interesting that – even though infidelity is relatively common – it is still highly taboo.

“When infidelity comes up with a couple who are in therapy with me, it’s judgement day in my office. It is so controversial and so painful," says Gran. 

For some, especially those who are particularly vulnerable, infidelity – whether emotional or sexual – represents a breach of trust that cannot be repaired, she explains. 

While others, who are more secure in the relationship, manage to sort things out, set firm boundaries, and move on.

Jealousy, betrayal, and grief

Ole André Solbakken emphasises that infidelity sets off what he calls 'a rush' of emotions when it is revealed.

“Most people feel intense jealousy and rage at having been betrayed or deceived, and grief and despair that the person you love is capable of hurting you so deeply. It can be incredibly painful. On top of that comes the fear that everything might go completely wrong,” he says.

Sissel Gran stresses that as humans, we are inherently contradictory.

We need attachment and closeness

“We have a strong basic need for attachment and closeness, which can collide with the fact that we are also driven by desire. Some are more driven by desire than others and are drawn to what's exciting, thrilling, perhaps a bit forbidden and unfamiliar,” says Gran.

The couples therapist says that synchronising these feelings can be difficult.

“It can be a challenging task to reconcile your need for security and attachment with the person you love and the more passionate undercurrent within you, which I like to call ‘desire gone astray’,” she says.

Most people are faithful

From the media, you can often get the impression that infidelity is extremely widespread.

But Ole André Solbakken explains that the latest Sexual Habits Survey from the University of Oslo shows that one in five women report having been unfaithful at some point in their lives.

About one in four men report the same.

“What makes these figures so interesting for us is that the overwhelming majority of men and women in Norway say they have never been unfaithful," says Solbakken.

There is a lack of statistics on emotional infidelity

"I think we talk as if infidelity is almost the norm rather than the exception, but the truth is the opposite," the psychology professor says.

He notes that there are no corresponding statistics for emotional infidelity.

That is partly because it is harder to agree on a clear definition of what it is. 

But he assumes that emotional infidelity is at roughly the same level as sexual infidelity.

A demanding repair process

“So what does it take to repair a relationship after emotional or physical infidelity?”

“The person who has been unfaithful must truly mean it when they say they want to repair things and must show this clearly to their partner – not least by ending all contact with the person involved, and preferably deleting them from all digital platforms,” says Sissel Gran.

She stresses that it's just as important for the betrayed partner to accept these peace offerings.

“If you don't accept the other person’s genuine attempts to repair the relationship, then there is no chance," says the couples therapist.

Listen to the Norwegian podcast episode below:

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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