In America, you can be divorced three
times, and no one will bat an eyelid.
But one transgression, such as infidelity,
or doing something that's out of bounds...
...and you'll be seen as unfaithful forever.
More family-oriented societies
have always done this differently.
They've always had a compromise
about infidelity to save the family.
They keep it private.
- Yes, and no divorce.
What's important is that everyone
thought this was scandalous.
So I asked: It's not a problem to you when
people say: This is my fourth husband?
Or my fourth wife?
Why is breaking all the ties of an entire
family and destroying everything...
...not a problem to you?
Because for so many years,
getting divorced was a shame.
There was a stigma on it.
Today, divorce has been normalised,
but if you stay after an infidelity...
...when you could leave,
that's the new shame.
So if your partner has an affair
and cheats on you...
...and you stay,
you have to keep two secrets.
One about what happened,
and one to your friends and family.
If you stay together, they'll judge you...
...because the real emancipation
wants you to leave.
As in: She's a slut, she cheated on you.
Leave her.
Or: He's a dick, he cheated on you.
Leave him.
And if you stay, you'll be judged for it.
- Yes.
Because infidelity
is the greatest deceit these days.
More than other forms of deceit
in relationships.
It's due to the new model for love
why it has become the main deceit.
And this is very new.
It wasn't the case 60 years ago.
Your first book
had one chapter on infidelity...
...and then you wrote a whole book on it.
What fascinated you about it?
Look...
There is one taboo...
...that's universally condemned...
...and universally practised,
and that's adultery.
Historically and universally condemned,
and existing in every society.
It's the only one
of the Ten Commandments...
...that's mentioned twice.
- Two commandments about adultery?
One is about doing it
and one about thinking about it.
It's the only one. Someone must have had
a good understanding of human nature.
And adultery has been around
as long as marriage itself.
I was interested in it because I wanted
to write about modern relationships again.
That's what the book is really about.
But it's best to use a crisis in which
things often go wrong as a starting point...
...for making a relationship more resilient.
We won't talk about Apple and Google,
but about the companies with problems.
Resilient means able to recover?
- Yes.
In adultery, there's betrayal, deceit...
...lies, secrets, desire, love,
possessiveness and jealousy.
You can find the entire human drama in it,
without having to go to the opera for it.
Yesterday, I gave a lecture
to 900 people in Italy, and I asked them:
Have you ever experienced infidelity,
or been affected by it?
Because one of your parents
left for someone else or had an affair...
...because you're the child
of an illegitimate love...
...because you've been someone's
shoulder to cry on for weeks...
...or the confidant of someone
involved in an affair...
...or because you're one of the three
protagonists in the triangle yourself.
900 hands went up?
- Pretty much.
It's not a story of a few bad apples.
And I see people in my office
who have so much pain.
So much confusion.
So many questions: Why it's happening,
what they'll do with their lives now...
...and what it means to them
that the loyalty and trust is gone...
...and that they thought they knew...
...but now they don't know anymore
what their story or relationship really was.
And because the deceit of infidelity
has become one the main deceits.
It has always been painful,
but now it's traumatic.
Because in a romantic ideal
there shouldn't be adultery.
If you've found your soulmate,
it shouldn't happen anymore.
You mean that nowadays
it's more traumatic than before?
Yes, because in the old days, when
marriage wasn't so much about love...
...it was normal that infidelity
was the domain of passion and love.
Marriage was for the family.
- So infidelity was tolerated?
Today, love and passion
are part of our relationships.
So if you're unfaithful now,
it's the betrayal of love.
So that's why it hurts so much?
- Yes.
It's the fracture
of the grand ambition of love.
What did you learn about the motivation
of people who cheat, from your research?
It's what I also saw in this film, A Walk on the Moon.
I watched it a long time ago.
After that, I started doing research
in 20 countries...
...on the theme: What happens
when desire goes looking elsewhere?
The first book was about
desire within relationships.
Not sexual desire, but the longing for life.
But what happens when people
go looking elsewhere, like this woman?
What she doesn't say here, but what
she would tell me in a session, is:
I didn't want to get away
from my husband, but from who I am.
From who I have become.
I didn't want to find a different person,
but a different self.
I wanted to find parts of myself
that I had never known, because I was 17.
Or that I had forgotten, because
in a relationship people play a role.
They play it for years and rarely change it.
But at some point,
they don't desire sex or another partner...
...but another experience with themselves.
- Another me?
Yes, that's what she's really saying.
Most people who seek help
aren't having affairs left and right.
They're like this woman,
monogamous and loyal for 15 years...
...until they cross the line and do
something they never thought they'd do.
And why? Why do people risk
losing everything they've built?
Breaking all the rules they made
themselves. What are they looking for?
It's this theme of the new me, of feeling
alive, finding freedom and autonomy...
...of what Woodstock symbolised for her.
But I think we know a lot
about the experience of the 'victim'...
...and not so much about the motivations
of the people who do it.
The victim is the one who's betrayed?
- Yes, our current model...
...is about a perpetrator and a victim.
But sometimes the victim of the infidelity
isn't the victim of the relationship.
In this film, she talks to her daughter,
who asks her:
I saw you at Woodstock.
What were you doing there?
Why don't you stay with dad?
- She was there with her lover.
Sometimes you have to be
with someone else to be someone else.
This sentence stuck with me, and I started
hearing it with thousands of people.
The TED Talk about infidelity
has more than ten million views...
...and every day, I get letters
from around the world.
And the two groups that write the most
are betrayed men and unfaithful women.
The two groups that have the least
possibility of speaking in society.
In every society.
Previously you had two people
to choose from in your village.
Later you had ten choices in your city.
Now you have thousands of people
at your fingertips.
You swipe left or right.
- It is real romantic consumerism.
And in this model
you are looking for your soulmate.
That is a real contradiction.
You know you have found your soulmate
when you remove your Tinder app.
That is the new commitment ritual.
When you have found true love
you delete it.
Deleting your app
is the new symbol of commitment.
It is incredible. How do you know
you have found your true love?
You may think: "Is there no-one better?
Can't I find someone else?"
FOMO: Fear of Missed Opportunity.
- Not Fear Of Missing Out?
Missing Out or Missed...
That model of consumerism...
...while looking for your soulmate...
...with whom we want to have things
we previously found in religion:
Ecstasy, meaning, transcendence...
Those were all experiences
you found in the realm of God...
...and not in that of romantic love.
So it is romantic consumerism?
- It is romantic consumerism.
That is one thing this movie shows
in a beautiful way. Secondly...
Previously you married.
That was how you got into a relationship.
Then you had sex for the first time.
Now, as you enter a relationship...
...you stop having sex with others.
Previously you were 18 and you started
your life with someone. Now you're 28...
...and you are recognised by somebody
for your fabulous identity project.
Previously monogamy was one partner
for life, now it is one partner at a time.
My patients all say: "I am monogamous
in all my relationships." Plural.
That is a whole new geography.
A new landscape of modern relationships.
This couple and this movie, Newness...
...show many of these new ideas.
Of people who still look
for a connection and commitment...
...while retaining their freedom
and individuality.
The integration
of those two human Bedürfnissen...
Requirements. Yes, requirements.
- No, not that. It's more...
Needs.
- Longing. Yes, needs.
People have needs in a relationship:
security, feeling protected, stability...
...and the need for freedom, newness,
change, autonomy and individuality.
We have never before tried...
...to find both those
fundamental human needs...
...in one relationship.
They were always separated.
Now we think we can find them
in one partner?
We now ask one partner for everything
we used to get from the whole village.
Important about this book and the other
is that I do not advocate a model.
I am more a...
-You don't say:
"It is a good idea to have an affair,
to not be monogamous...
...to have an open relationship." You
just show the pros and cons of models.
I understand what people are trying to do.
The kids of today are trying
not to separate so easily.
They just try
to create new relationship models.
That happened in the past
and it is still happening.
But when you talk about it or write about
it, it looks like you advocate something.
I don't judge and I don't advocate.
Right. You don't promote it.
- No, I am not a promotor.
Someone approached me
at a lecture, saying:
My wife is in a nursing home and
she doesn′t remember my name.
Am I cheating by having a new girlfriend
who supports me...
and who gives me the energy to visit
my wife two or three times a week?
That's a totally different story.
- What did you answer?
It's not for me to say
whether that's cheating or not.
I told him: Look, that's
a whole new question, for she's...
If someone has Alzheimer's
we call it an ambiguous loss.
A loss that's not clearly defined:
the person is physically present...
but psychologically absent.
With a kidnapping
it's the other way around.
The person is physically absent
but psychologically very present.
So to be with someone
who doesn't recognise you...
what kind of a situation is that?
That's a very painful reality.
And I understand it when this man says:
Someone supports me...
gives me the energy, the eroticism,
to sit with my partner and...
And my partner is not the same person.
- I don't leave my partner.
I'm loyal, but I'm not faithful.
Those are two different things.
- I don't need to be the moral arbiter.
I just need to help people
answer their own questions.
You also see here that there are
various outcomes after cheating.
Some people remain stuck.
If years later you're five minutes late...
They can't...
- It's still an open wound.
Some people never talk about it again.
And other people have a whole
new relationship, a new phase.
Nowadays in the West many people
have two or three couples.
Married or unmarried.
- You mean two or three relationships.
And some of us have them
with the same person.
Some people have two or three...
- Marriages with the same person.
Because you make a new start.
- And sometimes cheating...
marks the end of the first marriage.
Then you ask if you would like
to start all over again together.
You've been with your husband for...
- 35 years.
And how many marriages?
- I say three, he says four.
