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When the former astronomer employee Andy Bayron and HR Her of the company were caught choking on a jumbotron during a concert, the moral condemnation was followed by a collective question: why would they risk their families and career for experience?
As an executive advisor and couples therapist, I often spend my days sitting from clients who are considering or already participating in such situations. Most are not abusers, narcissists or sexual addicts involved in serial infidelity. They are good people: hardworking, kind and dedicated to their careers and families.
So, what drives a person – even the one who swears he will never cheat – suddenly goes through the abyss and risks everything about an affair?
People are widespread to seek the approval of others and as social beings our survival often depends on it. We “go with the stream”, suppressing our emotions to please the people around us.
But like the spring, which becomes more tightened with each passing year, it can quietly lay the foundations for violence.
Here are five surprisingly common psychological pitfalls that can make someone risk everything about an affair.
1. Always be “good”
Many of my customers who have dealt with extramarital affairs have always considered themselves “good”. They listened to their parents, studied hard, landed lucrative work, married, had children and followed every public expectation to the letter.
For them, love and childhood acceptance were related to achievements, and they often reach a middle age without having a clear sense of who they really are. When the restless sense that “something is missing” inevitably begins to appear, they sometimes turn to an affair in an attempt to fill the void.
2. To be a perfectionist
It is no surprise that perfectionism is a trait that I see in almost all my highly efficient clients. But perfectionism is often a response to trauma. Children in volatile environments or those given inconsistent approval often believe that doing everything will preserve them perfectly.
Over time, they get tired of applying impossible high standards to themselves and those around them. When Affair acquires, they can suddenly give up their attempts to be perfect and double in the opposite direction.
For them, an illegal relationship can feel free from their own unrealistic expectations – Salva, which softens the firmness that framed their lives.
3. With bad boundaries
People with weak borders often had parents who were somehow disabled – by addiction, poverty, feeling overload or simple immaturity – and the role in providing emotional stability at home fell on their small shoulders.
Born children derive their sense of value from the successful expectation and meeting the needs of others. But in the end, they begin to feel angry with the people they “help”.
When Affair comes to knock, they rationalize it by saying that they have spent their whole lives by giving others, and now it’s time to do something for themselves.
4. To be in a violent or emotionally retaining marriage
As the famous couples of Esther Esther Perell emphasize in his book “State of Things: Rethinking of Cheating,” the victim of an affair is not always a victim of the relationship.
Some of my clients participate in cases after lasting years of physical, emotional or verbal abuse. The secret relationship may be unexpected, but welcome for decades of unscrupulous treatment.
This can also be a subconscious form of revenge, the decision to blow up the relationship once and for all in an attempt to save. There is no turning back after the affair is exposed and the outraged land offers them a chance to start again.
5. They have recently suffered a loss
One of the first questions I ask clients who are considering AFERA is whether they have recently lost someone or something close to them. Grief is a catalyst and often the death of a parent triggers a reassessment of current relationships and priorities.
During this reassessment period, the boundaries become more permeable, which sometimes allows a country outside the marriage to gain access.
After the affair
Nobel Laureate Albert Schweicer was quoted by saying: “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. He then burst into a flame from meeting another human being. “
It is this intoxicating sense of emotional enlightenment that makes many feel that the affair is worth the risk of everything they have ever appreciated. Their global gaze is narrowing, while every aspect of their lives outside the affair partner did not reduce in their visual area. Only in retrospection things are calmed down in their right scale and the situation can be considered objectively.
For some couples, Affair may cause the death of a marriage that has already held his course. For others, this may encourage self-reflection and renegotiation of Union conditions, which allows them to emerge stronger and better than before.
In a professional way, the consequences can be changing career and irreversible.
Learning how to stand up for yourself before you get to any emotional interruptions is both a personal and professional superpower.
Lisa Ok is a former co-host of the CNBC Asia Squawk box. She is already media trainer, Executive advisorand the host of As a human podcastS Lisa holds a master’s degree in both journalism and consulting. Her articles focus on executive mental health, leadership and effective communication.
