Personal Vulnerabilities

It is not possible to predict with 100 percent accuracy how any individual will react to infidelity according to the nature of the betrayal and the manner in which it was discovered. Betrayed partner also react in a variety of ways based on their personal relationship history, self-worth, and emotional stability.

Hopelessness about the future is more prevalent in betrayed partners who blame the infidelity on their own shortcomings and those who fear abandonment. To some extent, this is a matter of in-born temperament: Some people are born serene and nonreactive, whereas others come into this world prickly and hypersensitive.

Who we are is also partly a consequence of the experiences we have had in the past. Our relationship history influences how we will react to interpersonal injuries. To understand why one person stumbles and can’t go on and why someone else is able to keep walking in similar circumstances requires an understanding of each person’s past. We carry our wounds and our triumphs around with us long after they’ve actually happened.

 

Low Self-Esteem

People with low self-esteem will have greater difficulty recovering because they interpret their partner’s betrayal as proof of their own inadequacies.

Belinda had a chronically ill mother and a supercritical father. Nothing she did was ever good enough for her father. Her mother, on the other hand, was loving but depended on her daughter to take care of her. When Belinda married, she thought she had found her soul mate and would finally get the love and validation she had been searching for. Her whole world came crashing down when she discovered his love letters to another woman. She couldn’t ever feel special with him again. The healing relationship she had expected with her husband turned into another huge scar, although she is working hard to become more independent.

 

Individuals who had intense sibling rivalries and were the least preferred by their parents are apt to carry into their adult relationships the need to prove that they are worthy of being loved. When their partners get involved with someone else, it evokes all those old feelings of competition or of being the outsider or the one less favored.

Betrayed partners who were scapegoated or neglected as children are vulnerable to viewing a partner’s infidelity as a personal rejection.

Men or women who are anxious about their own sexual performance or attractiveness are especially vulnerable to excessive feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt if their partner has extramarital sex.

Russ felt as if he had been hit with a club when he discovered that his wife, Rita, had had an affair. She had never seemed that interested in sex with him. When he found out that she had discussed his sexual shortcomings with her affair partner, Russ was embarrassed and humiliated. This guy knew all about him, but Russ didn’t know anything about the affair partner or his sexual exploits with Rita.

Fractured Trust

Individuals who did not develop basic trust during childhood are especially vulnerable to deception by a loved one. Infidelity brings back all of those childhood wounds for a person who was lied to or whose parents made promises they didn’t keep.

Those who were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused in previous relationships may be retraumatized when someone they have counted on betrays their trust and dependency.

Parental Infidelity

Witnessing parental infidelity can place people at greater risk of traumatization if they are betrayed by their chosen partner.

Gloria thought her life was perfect until she was thirteen. Her father left her mother for another woman, and Gloria’s world blew apart. When she talked about her childhood, everything was placed in time as before her father’s affair (when things were wonderful) and after his affair (when her family fell apart). Although her husband knew of her wounds, he had an affair anyway. To Gloria this showed such a lack of regard for her that she could not stay in the marriage.

 

[box type=”info”] Men who witnessed a mother’s infidelities are more likely than other men to exhibit pathological jealousy and an inability to let go of a partner’s betrayal. In contrast, some women whose fathers were philanderers seem to accept being married to men of the same ilk. They stay while their husbands stray. They look the other way because their expectations were shaped by their family legacy.[/box]

 

An interesting illustration of a father’s influence was told to me by a woman from a large ethnic family who was given a piece of advice the day before her wedding. Her father was a man of few words, but he pulled her aside and said, “I want you to know that if you ever learn that your husband has been involved with another woman, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”

When her husband did cheat, she was unhappy but not traumatized.