Even when it is not the initial reason for consulting, infidelity often comes back in the course of therapy: like an old wound, never treated, still at work today.

The word infidelity is the one couples use spontaneously. In a therapeutic setting, however, it is very interesting to replace it — or at least to pair it — with the word extraconjugality. The reason is simple: infidelity carries a moral connotation, whereas extraconjugality makes it possible to define what happened without passing moral judgement.

All the more so as the very notion of fidelity varies enormously from one couple to another. Some couples have extraconjugal relationships without experiencing them as infidelity; there is then another space, or specific rules whose transgression is what will be experienced as infidelity.

It is not necessarily an attack

In the scenarios described, what is involved is an attraction, fleeting or persistent, towards someone outside the couple. That attraction may be transformed or interpreted as a wrongdoing. But it must be kept in mind that this wrongdoing is not — or at least not necessarily — an attack against the other member of the couple.

I stress this because in the majority of cases it is not one; but it does happen that it is, as revenge or as a way of making the other pay. In those cases, as a rule, clues are left behind: there is a wish for the other to notice, precisely so that it hurts.

Very often, on the contrary, it is an attempt to reinforce oneself narcissistically, by seeking outside a recognition or a confirmation one cannot obtain inside.

A few triggers

• A mutual attraction that fades.
• The engine of sexuality slowing down.
• A certain wear and tear of daily life.
• Wounds, crises, a tiredness that pervades life as a couple.

At that point, the fantasies and the attraction that bound the partners come to be embodied in someone else, outside the couple: the one who used to be a source of inspiration or of amorous stimulation no longer is, neither in the scenarios, nor in the fantasies, nor in reality.

Some extraconjugal episodes also appear as a consequence of the three other couple dysfunctions. They may equally arise from a flaw in the process of mariation, or as the manifestation of a crisis of personal growth.

The crisis and the narcissistic wound

When this extraconjugal reality comes to light, it generates in the vast majority of cases a major crisis and a narcissistic wound. The revelation triggers a whole set of emotions in the person on the receiving end: deep sadness, sometimes depression, anger, hatred, resentment. This may show as a certain aggressiveness and as attacks against the other.

And that other person may answer those attacks by pointing in turn at a narcissistic flaw: saying that if they did this, it is the other’s fault, that they are too much this or not enough that, that if they looked elsewhere it is because something was being refused to them, or because the other lacked some particular quality. The risk is real: that the narcissistic wound deepens to the point of becoming almost irreparable, or of requiring long and thorough work.

This is why it will be very important, for the therapist supporting a couple who has been through this, to state that one partner having gone to explore things outside the couple is not an attack against the other.

What the work bears on

Couples can overcome episodes of extraconjugality. But whatever happens, a separation will have to take place: if it is not the separation of the two members of the couple, it will be the separation from the lover. The therapist has to be extremely containing to allow this, and to allow trust to be re-established.

The therapist must also bear in mind that, in this kind of configuration, the worst in each person may come out: revenge, attacks, unhealthy curiosity.

Only afterwards can notions such as seduction be worked on. With this idea, which the therapist almost has to recall: in seduction, nothing is ever a due. As soon as one starts asking the other to show up without taking their own desire or fantasies into account, that is when the lover appears as the bearer of the lost fantasy.

It then becomes important to know which behaviours activate the other’s desire; each should ask themselves how they went about seducing them in the first place. This seduction requires preparation and thought — but it must always carry an essential charge of authenticity. That is almost the central ingredient: if behaviours are produced without being authentic, the other feels it immediately, it does not work, and it may even worsen the problem, since the one who believes they made unrewarded efforts will be all the more frustrated. This is something to be worked on very subtly in the space of couple therapy.

That leaves the last of the four: immaturity.