I think here you can get a good insight from reformed wayward partners, because they can give you the other side perspective on how a person can allow themselves to become that, and the story and lies you have to tell yourself in the first place to be able to follow that self sabotaging path.
What I can give you is the general understanding of what issues are at the root and how they influence the behavior of a wayward.
Most commonly is this:
- low self worth
Followed closely by its relatives:
- people pleasing
- perfectionism
- avoidance
- emotional unavailability
The soothing mechanism for this issues is this:
- external validation
People with this character flaws feel a bottomless void that cannot be filled by normal human attachment. No measure of love or validation from a healthy partner can, because the moment it gets real and serious the fears connected to the flaws trigger and whatever you pour in, no matter how much, gets lost in their spiral.
You understand that this is not a stable or sustainable way to be a fulfilled adult individual.
But there’s something that works in soothing this internal desert, dopamine.
Dopamine makes you feel happy chemically and overrides temporarily whatever pain you’re feeling as a baseline.
Stupid example but often people have experienced it in their youth, when you are having a down period and everything looks bleak but then you meet someone that you fall in love with or just even have a crush for and you initiate something. And then all is rainbows and sunshine for a while. That’s how dopamine and happy chemicals work on us.
Now healthy and mature relationships provide us with an almost unlimited supply of happy chemicals, but is not a high like in flings, it’s steady.
So when you are dysfunctional and you fall back in your love self worth and rest spiral, it kind of loses its grip because it’s a baseline and not an high (so they got it but don’t feel it anymore and become a plateau, realigning with their sad unresolved issues and gradually all is bleak again).
Coping with this: let’s get a new dopamine high. External validation works like a charm for that.
You can’t give that anymore, because you already give it all, it feels good but they need that rush.
Hey this guy / girl over there has zero problem in messing with people in relationships! Obviously they are searching for excitement like me, giving no fucks how wrong, evil or sordid it is, all they want is a feel good high. And I do too. Let’s indulge.
Feel good overrides the void for a while, but shame might still drag them down.
To get the most of it you want to get the most validation from any source you can tap into.
So there’s the adultery providing the high, and there is you providing the baseline.
If I can compartmentalize both in little untouching boxes, I can get the best of both worlds, and the clandestine nature also keeps me busy in making sure they never touch, so I distract myself from going back there into the bleakness of my unresolved issues (bonus: I don’t even need to address those issue, to face my ghosts, as long as it goes on they are quieted. Win win).
It is messed up, but it is more or less what seems to be going on in who leads this double life. Similar to when you dive in work or things that keeps you so busy that you have no time to think about something haunting you.
A coping mechanism, just very self destructive.
And mind, it is all me, me, me, me, me…. Notice that nobody else matter anything in this picture.
Is the epythome of selfishness, you don’t matter, family and children don’t matter, friends don’t matter, even the affair partner doesn’t matter, is just a pig with similar issues happy to roll in the mud and call it a dream.
Perhaps because it is a drugged dream, from our own chemicals, but still very much one.
