Why People Cheat On You

Summary

Highlights

• Infidelity is compared to PTSD, affecting people even in stable relationships. 🌍
• Esther Perel and Madama Bovary offer lenses to explore cheaters' psychology. 📚
• Imagination in relationships can amplify flaws and fuel dissatisfaction. 🎭
• Transgression adds thrill to affairs, making them more enticing. 🌟
• Affairs often involve rationalizing to square actions with self-image. 🪞

Key Takeaways

• People cheat for many reasons, often reflecting broader philosophical patterns in life. 🤔
• Imagination and unrealistic expectations can distort love and fuel infidelity. 💔
• Forbidden acts offer a thrill that entices some into affairs. 🌶️
• Infidelity isn't just about dissatisfaction; it can be an assertion of independence. 📢
• Cheating can reveal philosophical issues about commitment and freedom. 🔄

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction The introduction chapter discusses the pervasive issue of infidelity, highlighting it as a global and timeless problem. It emphasizes how betrayal in relationships can cause significant emotional distress, often equated to PTSD by some therapists. Infidelity is particularly shocking and condemned in modern society, despite sometimes occurring in seemingly healthy relationships.
• 03:30 - 11:00: Imagination and Expectations Today, the podcast explores the topic of infidelity, even in seemingly satisfactory relationships. It questions what might motivate individuals to cheat and seeks to develop a philosophy of infidelity. The discussion draws on insights from Esther Perel's book 'The State of Affairs' and the timeless novel 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert. These sources are used to delve into the psychology of the adulterer and the dynamics involved in such situations.
• 15:00 - 25:30: The Thrill of Transgression The chapter delves into the complex psychology of adultery, exploring various factors that contribute to the allure of transgression. It connects themes of infidelity with eroticism and suggests that the lessons learned from a cheating spouse extend beyond romantic relationships to broader contexts. The analysis offered is not exhaustive, given the nuanced and understudied nature of infidelity, and is aimed at encouraging readers to form their own perspectives. The focus is placed specifically on adultery cases where certain unspecified conditions are met, setting boundaries for the discussion.
• 25:30 - 40:30: Laundering Morality The chapter titled 'Laundering Morality' explores the concept of staying informed without falling prey to biased newsfeeds. It introduces Ground News, a platform designed as a solution to this issue. Ground News aggregates articles from numerous global sources, allowing users to compare various media outlets' coverage of a single story. The service provides a detailed analysis of each story, highlighting the political biases, factual accuracy, and ownership of the reporting sources. These ratings are independently validated, offering users a transparent and comprehensive news consumption experience.
• 40:30 - 52:30: Existential Adultery The chapter 'Existential Adultery' delves into the contrasting perspectives of left-wing and right-wing publications following an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris by Fox News. It highlights how left-wing sources generally viewed Harris's performance positively, considering the interview as a 'great idea,' while right-wing sources criticized the event and deemed it unsuccessful. The discussion underscores the varying interpretations and biases in media reporting on political events.

Why People Cheat On You Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 at this very moment in all corners of the globe someone is either cheating or being cheated on if there is a clear way to become a pariah in the modern day it is to cheat on your partner there are so few things that attract as much ey as much indignation as an Unfaithful lover this is totally understandable infidelity causes an awful lot of pain some therapists have even come to associate it with PTSD symptoms and what's more it sometimes happens even when nothing seems wrong with the relationship in question but despite all
• 00:30 - 01:00 this there has not been a lot of systematic thinking about what makes people cheat even when their relationship seem perfectly satisfactory can we look inside the head of the adulterer and see what makes them tick can we construct a loose philosophy of infidelity well today I'll be doing just that using two main sources the Fantastic book the State of Affairs by psychotherapist Esther perel and the landmark novel Madame bovy by Gustav fler which for Generations has the test
• 01:00 - 01:30 of time as an empathetic yet uncompromising look at adultery get ready to learn the different factors that go into the cheetah psychology what transgression and eroticism have in common and how the lessons of a cheating spouse stretch far wider than merely the context of love as always bear in mind this is not a comprehensive guide to thinking around infidelity and since it's a pretty understudied field a lot of this will be relatively speculative I mainly want to help spark your own thinking on the subject I will also be focusing on adultery where there is no
• 01:30 - 02:00 clear cause within the relationship as I find this more mysterious and thus more interesting but there is one way to avoid being cheated by your newsfeed and that is today's very kind sponsor ground news ground news is a website and app that gathers related articles from thousands of sources around the world in one place so you can compare how different Outlets cover the same story every story comes with a clear breakdown of the political bias factuality ownership and headlines of the reporting sources with ratings back by Independent
• 02:00 - 02:30 News monitoring organizations grounds news are very kindly offering anyone who uses my link or scans this QR code 40% off their Vantage plan subscription it's a fantastic deal and please do check it out for instance let's see how left and right-wing Publications differed on the recent interview of presidential candidate camela Harris by Fox News whereas left-wing sources tended to place her answers in pretty high esteem with one even describing the interview as a great idea right-wing Publications called the whole thing a failure and were much more critical of Harris's
• 02:30 - 03:00 performance I especially like the blind spots feed which highlights stories that are disproportionately covered by the left or the right this feed helps readers step into the other side's news reality and understand the different narratives that can shape their beliefs in this case leftwing news sources fail to cover Andrew Schultz predicting a trump Victory while the right missed Ronda santis approving some changes to election procedure I don't have a lot of time to keep up with the news and certainly not to examine every single article I read for bias so ground news is fantastic for giving me an idea of
• 03:00 - 03:30 the differences in reporting on different stories so that I can get a variety of views rather than remaining stuck in my echo chamber go to ground. news/ unsolicited or scan my QR code to subscribe today for 40% off the very same Vantage plan that I use for unlimited access to all of their features personally I think ground news is doing very important work and I sincerely hope you'll check them out but anyway back to the video One imagination expectations and dissa isfaction I have
• 03:30 - 04:00 made a variety of videos on the topic of Love on this channel and a common theme in everyone is how our imagination and our expectations interfere with the process of loving both for the better and unfortunately for the worse and unsurprisingly this is also the case with infidelity to set the scene Madame boy follows Emma bovy a young woman who has married a medical man Charles bovy in provincial France in the early 19th century Emma had high hopes for marriage having read a huge amount of romance literature in her Youth and Charles
• 04:00 - 04:30 seemed a perfectly suitable match he was an educated man in a promising profession kind honest and straightforward he met the expectations of what a middle-class European in the 19th century ought to be and yet when they are married Emma finds that her lofty expectations are simply not being met she was dreaming of a love to conquer all things full of drama and passions sacrifice and narrative she pinned all her hopes for this on Charles imagining that they would live in petual
• 04:30 - 05:00 ardor for one another but it quickly becomes clear this is not what married life with Charles will be they have a perfectly Pleasant Union Yes but it's not nearly enough to satisfy Emma and she quickly turns elsewhere interestingly Emma's infidelity begins in very small acts of imagination stuff most people would consider harmless barely worth a mention on one occasion she and Charles are invited to a ball with some members of the French Upper Crust and she finds herself in trance by a certain handsome vcon she does not act
• 05:00 - 05:30 improperly at all but she just lets her mind run wild at what life is like for him and what things might be like with him she idolizes a particular existence that Charles cannot give her but she imagines that the VMP could she pictures him riding dancing dining and socializing in her mind he is unfailingly elegant and loquaciously eloquent he is charming kind and romantic he would never be as dull or un enticing as Charles he is exciting and
• 05:30 - 06:00 their life together would be exciting the French writer stal or the psychologist Dorothy tenof would say that Emma is crystallizing she is using a tiny scrap of information to infer a whole range of things about the vont and because he is not there for enough time to provide contradictory evidence it is easy for her to believe that her judgments are accurate she still firmly believes that her storybook romances with their faultless and effortless lovers and endless happiness can become
• 06:00 - 06:30 a reality she just believes she has been saddled with a man incapable of giving that to her this crystallization is not just a theme of infidelity it arguably happens quite a lot in the early stages of romance as I talked about on the channel before the positive qualities of our beloved are Amplified in our mind while their negative ones are unconsciously overlooked it is just that in the case of infidelity there is a built in distance that can allow the imagination to flourish unimpeded a key part of Marcel PR observations about
• 06:30 - 07:00 love is that sometimes paradoxically the less attainable the person we desire is the more we seek them the fact that we cannot be with them inflames all the questions of what life would be like were we with them which in turn kicks this crystallization process into overdrive Perell also makes this observation about her patients she observes that a subset of people engaged in Affairs idolize the relationship they have with their Affair partner it becomes a case of pure but Forbidden
• 07:00 - 07:30 Love they are Lancelot and gwy a true pairing that has only been thwarted by the cruelty of their circumstances however the fragility of this illusion often becomes all too apparent if they do get their wish and do end up together Perell observes that many of her clients who leave their partner in order to turn their Affair into a full-blown relationship end up single in a short time it becomes evident that the story they told themselves about perfect starcross lovers was a lie and their love quickly faed Fades into
• 07:30 - 08:00 disenchantment we see this in Emma bovy later in the novel when she actually does begin having Affairs her first full-blown lover is the rogish Rolph who is consciously pursuing her but abandons her when she gets too close to him she never fully gets to be with Rolph as he does not truly love her he is mainly using her for pleasure their Affair lasts four whole years and yet the Grandeur of their romance never fades in Emma's eyes she sees rodolph as a true romantic someone with a sense for high feelings she is certain that if they
• 08:00 - 08:30 were together then it would be a love story like no other she imagines them running off to some other country spending their time in a romantic heaven with no one to disturb their love he would be the fair Romeo to her CSH Juliet and they would live happily ever after if only that blasted idiot Charles wasn't in the way when Rolf does abandon Emma she is truly distraught she cannot imagine a life without him and falls into deep despair more warning the loss
• 08:30 - 09:00 of her extravagant fantasy let's contrast this with her later affair with a student named Leon Leon does love Emma and he makes it clear that he would happily have her he idolizes her just as much as she idolizes him he is not using her but instead sees her as an angel who he barely deserves and will gladly give his right arm to be with her properly as a result him and Emma gradually spend more time together and this is where things Begin to Fall Apart Emma gets just a little bit too much information
• 09:00 - 09:30 about Leon enough to dampen Her Imagination they start to talk about things other than just their love they become ever so slightly domestic comfortable calm and thus Emma loses interest she wonders how she could have been so silly as to think Leon would be her romantic hero their Affair falls apart not because Leon leaves in dramatic fashion like Rolph but rather because they become disillusioned with one another the pretense can no longer be maintained and what else we expect
• 09:30 - 10:00 Emma was never really in love with Leon but rather the prospect of him fulfilling a Fantastical expectation she had of Love itself to again draw from PR Emma's connections she had with her Affair Partners were never with them per se but instead with some idea she had of them she never loved anyone real but instead only caricatures she had constructed for herself like expertly made toys in a doll's house that's so beautiful you'd wish it were real of course course Emma has arguably started
• 10:00 - 10:30 this whole thing off on the wrong foot Ela Debon would criticize her for having an idea of love that is already far too idealized she had made the Fatal mistake of only approaching it from the standpoint of what could be in an imaginary world rather than what was actually there in front of her as Perell and also many sociologists have noted the expectations that we make of Love or life can cause a sense of AG grieved entitlement if they have been set too high we get a a sense that we have been
• 10:30 - 11:00 robbed of a promised life deprived of some great destiny that we ought to have been given in B's case her idea of a true romantic love was never going to be and she ruined What Might Have Been a much happier life in pursuit of it we can look out for these tendencies in a romantic partner but perhaps it is even more important to examine our own Hearts to see whether we are more like Madame bovy than we initially considered setting expectations is a high stakes game too low and someone could take advantage but too high and happiness
• 11:00 - 11:30 becomes a pretty far off Prospect but next I want to talk about something a bit more juicy in all of this discussion it is easy to bury some of the less Savory aspects of an affair so let's not beat around the bush let's tackle one of the most uncomfortable properties of our psychology head on if you want to help me make more videos like this then please consider becoming one of my wonderful patrons to support me and get access to exclusive content the link is in the description
• 11:30 - 12:00 two the thrill of transgression in his book seductions of crime the sociologist Jack cat suggests that we sometimes get a deep thrill out of doing something forbidden in addition to all of these socioeconomic factors that go into certain criminal actions there is sometimes an accompanying excitement to enacting something that is both forbidden and risky some of us may have experienced this directly though probably not in the context of crime when we were children many of us would have spent a certain amount of time deliberately disobeying our parents or
• 12:00 - 12:30 teachers perhaps we cheated on a test or indulged in some rudess to an authority figure and if we did this this may have come with an Associated sense of thrill that we could get away with something it is not just that we did something we wanted but that we temporarily rebelled against what we were meant to do and asserted our independence onto the world this is part of the appeal of anti-heroes or the byonic hero they can indulge wholeheartedly in this rebellion and we can get some vicarious excitement from that when we see John mlan as the
• 12:30 - 13:00 Renegade cop who doesn't play by the rules but damn it he gets results in Die Hard part of the entertainment is this transgressive element it would be a lot less engaging if he were just following procedure we see this tendency reflected in Emma bovy as well while she spends some portion of the novel genuinely torn up about her Affair more often than not she is subtly reveling in it at one point her Joy at being so deceptive and harboring such a secret is described at length we see this with both Rolph and
• 13:00 - 13:30 Leon in either case it is partly the very fact that the relationship is clandestine that sets her soul Ablaze it is not that she is pursuing something in spite of it being forbidden but rather because it is forbidden this Bears a strong relation to how she feels in her marriage and life more generally she closely Associates both with the feeling of being trapped she only enjoys playing the figure of The Virtuous wife when she knows this is a lie and she's actually a duplicitous adult ous it is entirely
• 13:30 - 14:00 possible that if Charles discovered the Affairs and consented to them seeming untroubled then they would lose their appeal for her it is partly the fact that she is living a double life that makes the whole thing so enticing for Emma she views herself as a little spy a nent makavelli who has managed to get one over on a situation she sees as a cosmic Injustice hell in many ways her life is unfair though most of us would probably not consider this to justify her Affair I'm not here to moralize just to explore ideas these observations by
• 14:00 - 14:30 flowar mesh very well with what Perell has found in her practice she talks about clients who embarked on their Affair not because of any particular problem with their objective situation but rather as just an act of Revolt this would explain why even opening a relationship is no defense against dishonesty and infidelity Perell details many people who seem to go out of their way to sleep with someone that is specifically off limits in the context of their Arrangement this makes no sense if it was just about the or the
• 14:30 - 15:00 attention but it becomes explicable if we view it through the lens of a deliberately exciting transgression Perell also points out that The Narrative of eroticism is often one of Discovery or overcoming challenges there is some obstacle to the love which is then defeated and there is this thrilling release at becoming Victors over whatever was standing in the way of romance in the early stages of any relationship these occur naturally all the time the possibility of rejection remains close at hand and and so every Milestone and moment of connection
• 15:00 - 15:30 already feels like a victory but Perell observes that the transgressive nature of an affair makes it one of the only situations where this cycle of overcoming obstacles is continuous they could be discovered any minute and so they are constantly winning a little Victory every time their Affair is prolonged by another day Perell says it's no wonder it can seem so intoxicating to the people involved again none of this is to justify Affairs it's simply offering one way of explaining certain mysterious patterns
• 15:30 - 16:00 of behavior if there was one thinker who knew the thrill of transgression like no other it was the Marquee desart he made a total Rebellion against any and all boundaries of morality or law the Cornerstone of his philosophy in works like Justine or Juliet it is clear that he gets his kicks both sexual and general out of the very Act of breaking some preconceived idea of what is good and given his history this is just what we might expect he was imp imprisoned in the bastile for many years deprived of
• 16:00 - 16:30 his freedom is it so surprising that he would jump to the Other Extreme in his philosophy the feeling of being trapped gave him a deep resentment at any notion of constraint if Emma felt similarly trapped and so similarly AG grieved this goes some way to explaining her own transgressive actions for those of us who have been stung by infidelity this may offer a small comfort in the aftermath of such a betrayal it is easy to imagine that we are solely responsible we must have done something
• 16:30 - 17:00 in order to make this happen in some cases this might even be true but it's also very easy to greatly overestimate our control in this situation if our partner is thrilled simply by breaking such a treasured rule there is not much we can do about that this may be disempowering but it is simultaneously relaxing like someone resigned to having been caught in the rain we can move on with our lives without this constant worry that we brought this on ourselves as the stoics used to say sometimes over estimating our power can cause just as
• 17:00 - 17:30 much misery as underestimating it but none of this answers the main question people often have when they're cheated on which is how could they do this to me that is how could they justify all of these lies and deceptions to themselves how did they Square it with their conscience well I'm glad you asked three laundering morality on this channel I talk a lot about how someone can convince themselves that they're doing a good thing or being a good person even while flying in the face of their stated
• 17:30 - 18:00 values or the values of the society they're a part of how can it be that someone can have an affair and yet still consider themselves a good person or acting well as we said at the start of the video infidelity is one of the only things that will get almost everyone firmly abandoning your side so what is the internal framework that allows someone to do that without burning up with cognitive dissonance well we'll first look at the sorry Case of Emma bovy and then explore some wider ideas for Emma she largely seemed to resolve
• 18:00 - 18:30 the conflict through two means using passion itself as a justification and an imaginative demonization of Charles the first is a surprisingly common cultural Touchstone our culture is full of narratives where actions that we would ordinarily condemn are perceived as Justified or otherwise dignified because of the addition of that all important extra ingredient love we have the story of Lancelot and gwy that we already mentioned along with Romeo and Juliet where violence and deception in the Name
• 18:30 - 19:00 of Love Is So sympathetic we often skip straight to seeing it as Noble these Tales only grow as we enter the romantic and post-romantic age bronte's weing Heights tolstoy's anakaren pini's turendot and even Madame bovy itself these stories may not say that violence or deception in the Name of Love is straightforwardly good but they do make it more dignified Emma has her own selection of romantic narratives from the novel she has read and this is very much the lens through which she sees her affair she is not just someone sneaking
• 19:00 - 19:30 around and lying to those closest to her she is doing it all in the Name of Love and that makes a world of difference at least in her eyes during her and rolph's conversations they both say as much reflecting that a powerful enough passion naturally frees itself from moral laws and becomes worthwhile in and of itself as one of perel's clients said for them their Affair was not a betrayal but the beginning of what they saw as a far on nobler Love Story Emma's other
• 19:30 - 20:00 technique is to use that imagination we discussed in the first section to not just exalt her lover but also demean Charles she slowly begins to see everything he does as insufferable from his perfectly respectable but unspectacular medical career to the way their house is decorated she cannot stand anything even remotely associated with Charles this sometimes even stretches to the child they have together she calls him pathetic or mediocre beneath her in aund little ways she turns even his straightforwardly
• 20:00 - 20:30 positive qualities into something someone could reasonably hate rather than being attentive she chooses to see him as cloying rather than his affection being warm it is unmanly rather than appreciating the income he brings in she minimizes it all as poultry all of this is in service to her need to make her lovers justifiable to herself the grain of Truth in her assessment that she is less than thrilled about the current state of her marriage is itself Amplified and crystallized to paint Charles as an unforgivable curse upon
• 20:30 - 21:00 her life someone who deserves everything he gets we see the contrast in the brief periods where Emma has no object to fixate her passions upon then she comes to see Charles in a much more sympathetic light then his successes seem greater his caresses more inviting when she no longer feels the need to demonize him she allows herself to see his good qualities but this is always shortlived as soon as some cognitive dissonance needs resolving she is right back to hating Charles it is only on her
• 21:00 - 21:30 deathbed that she finally realizes what she had this also Chimes nicely with some observations made by perel in a number of her accounts she talks about how the two people having an affair sometimes discuss their primary Partners in very negative terms they might not outright demonize them but they quite often subtly mock them or dismiss them or otherwise minimize their quality or significance perel herself does not explore this in too much detail but fl's novel offers us one speculative
• 21:30 - 22:00 explanatory Theory this maneuver does something psychologically important for the straying spouse condemning their partner makes their Affair more sympathetic more understandable it minimizes the role of their own agency then the transgression becomes something that almost anyone would do in their situation to draw upon Jean Paul satra it allows them to abdicate responsibility by acting in bad faith pretending they were much less free than they were perel hits the nail on the head when she says that Affairs enact a
• 22:00 - 22:30 certain entitlement they implicitly suggest that someone has the right to break the moral codes which binds polite Society so examining the kinds of strategies someone uses to justify this entitlement can be both interesting and philosophically productive other tactics Perell says people have used to minimize the agency they have in their Affair is the dogged insistence that despite all the evidence one is not that sort of person that it is okay because of some particular fault with their partner or that it is acceptable because it made
• 22:30 - 23:00 them feel alive in that last point we again see the theme of a great Passion allowing someone to justify An Affair to themselves on the whole perel puts this sort of thing down to a general human asymmetry when we are looking at injustices we tend to emphasize the role of individual agency when judging other people but instead think of external or environmental factors when we're examining our own misdeeds what someone else does is a fault of their character whereas what we do is simp simply the chaos of an unjust World pushing us into
• 23:00 - 23:30 acting Beyond this Perell talks about how some people push the hurt their affair would cause firmly to the back of their minds while they were having it they relished the excitement of breaking a rule but consciously did not think about how it would upset their partner this was a truth they found too difficult to look at it is a bit like how historians sometimes describe soldiers who commit war crimes getting incredibly drunk after the fact the wish they have to put themselves at a remove from the hurt they have caused is reasonably commonplace and when the
• 23:30 - 24:00 situation is inflamed by strong emotions like love and lust this sort of bootstrap self-justification is certainly something to watch out for but lastly I want to somewhat broaden this discussion because the same sorts of mental patterns that lead to adultery reflect wider philosophical ideas that can prevent us from finding happiness in any domain of our lives and so I want to end by talking about what an adulterous approach to life itself would consist of four existential adultery I think one of
• 24:00 - 24:30 the most interesting themes in how people approach adultery is that it is often seen as entirely divorced from wider approaches to life we stop at simply characterizing adultery as spiteful and selfish however the ingredients that go into adultery strike me as very similar to observations made by philosophers over the centuries about General existential approaches and in this way the adulterer can bring into Focus some aspects of our own philosophy of life that we may wish to reconsider
• 24:30 - 25:00 the first thing to note is that the unrealistic expectations someone like Emma has about love can easily be had about existence as well the German philosopher Friedrich ner used to talk about cycles of naivity disillusionment nihilism and then finding a new illusion to cling on to here he was talking about how people might leap from one dogmatic source of meaning in their lives to the next each time becoming slowly disillusioned and nihilistic before Reviving their illusions with a whole new approach that in turn will fall
• 25:00 - 25:30 apart for nature this was to avoid an unbearable truth about life that there will always be suffering and that we must learn to make that suffering meaningful and moreover there is no objective framework that will do that for us shophow are warned against expectations in a similar ve he said it was the Raging of the will to desire greater and greater things that can cause us extreme misery in the long term Emma could not be content with building up her relationship with Charles to something magnificent but rather wanted the trappings of a
• 25:30 - 26:00 storybook romance right then and there this was never going to happen with anyone long term but she had yet to realize it so rather than learning to restrain her will as shopen Hower might recommend it continued to roam free causing her to lust after anything that promised to fulfill that fantasy we could also view Emma's non-committal attitude through the lens of someone like kard for him many people remain in the aesthetic way of looking at the world for their entire life this is a complex concept but for our purpose it
• 26:00 - 26:30 is broadly characterized by two things the first is a priority given to one's own feelings and perspective on an issue above anything else and the second is an inability to commit to a single path in life kard paints The Human Condition as one tormented by choice there are so many things we could do so many lives we could live and yet by the end we will have only ever lived one likewise Perell presents many of her patients as using their to try to live new lives or revive
• 26:30 - 27:00 old ones this sort of non-commitment might be a short-term B to ease the pain of aging and yet kard would say it is a disaster in the long term He suggests it is only through commitment that we can ease our angst about the dizziness of freedom and push through to fully engage with what life has to offer for him any Endeavor be it in love or work or thought requires a leap of faith this is not necessarily faith that this would be the best life we ever could live but
• 27:00 - 27:30 rather a continual choice to pursue this course through and commit to it with mind body and spirit however this is no small task the trouble is that we'll be comparing what actually is to what possibly could be but what is possible is a vast infinite landscape rich with Vivid imaginings and verdant fantasies whereas we know what is actual it is right there in front of us with all of its imperfections and blemishes and yet avoiding the Allure of possibil is part of what kard thinks makes a fulfilling
• 27:30 - 28:00 life in this way the adulterer is applying a worldview that many of us fall into from time to time but just in the specific domain of love thirdly it is worth being aware of the general tendency to get a kick out of transgression so that we can carefully consider just when we want to transgress and which rules we want to leave firmly intact an observation Perell makes of the clients who have an affair specifically in order to break a rule is that they often feel trapped and constrained in the rest of their lives
• 28:00 - 28:30 both Jack Lan and Eric from corroborate this idea they suggest that when we feel as if our lives are out of our hands or that our autonomy is being constrained by social rules then we may start transgressing just to remind ourselves that we're a free agent if we accept this view then part of controlling the thrill of transgression is to actually allow ourselves a bit more freedom this does not mean that we should let people have affairs but rather perel suggests we should consider other aspects of Our Lives that might make us feel feel boxed in or as kagar might put it suffering
• 28:30 - 29:00 from a lack of possibilities transgressing these rules might have a similar effect of reassuring us of our agency and ability but without causing our world or relationship to collapse coupled with the previous Point made by kard we can think of maintaining a balance between commitment and enough freedom to allay our fears of being trapped that is we can commit to things wholeheartedly while still recognizing this is our choice obviously the balance here will be totally individual lastly Emma's ability to justify her Affair by
• 29:00 - 29:30 demonizing Charles is worth some careful thought we like to think of our judgments on our position relationships and more as simply considerations of the facts we are taking into account all of the evidence available to us and coming to a rational conclusion however the case of justifying Affairs reminds us of just how manipulable our minds can be and how carefully they will guard any belief we are already heavily invested in at some level we probably know this
• 29:30 - 30:00 the idea of someone being in denial is not unfamiliar to us but at the same time how often do we truly sit and examine where our willingness to protect our treasured view of ourselves conflicts with how we actually act in the world how often do we say that's not like me when reality would certainly beg to differ how often do we attribute blame to other people while reserving forgiveness and compassion for ourselves I don't mean to condemn anyone for this I think almost all of of us do it to a greater or lesser extent but I do think
• 30:00 - 30:30 it is worth reflecting upon history is littered with monsters who were sure they were doing the right thing and broken relationships are full of people who claim they never did anything to contribute to their dissolution considering this perhaps a bit of epistemic humility in our own judgments is warranted here I'm not suggesting that we can't be perfectly right about our ideas of ourselves and our situation just that our first glance views might leave a lot of valuable information completely out of the equation surely part of the value of learning and
• 30:30 - 31:00 practicing a philosophical approach to life is so that we can take our own views of the world and our lives and put them up to careful scrutiny arguably Emma B's fatal flaw above all else was her failure to question her own view on the world and on love her passions went totally unexamined and even if we think the unexamined life is still worth living it strikes me as a much riskier approach perhaps When Love Goes so badly wrong we should pay careful attention
• 31:00 - 31:30 just like an autopsy can tell us a lot about the process of a death an affair can teach us a lot about what kills love and even more importantly what robs us of a fulfilling life but if you want to explore some of these ideas in more detail and see my general examination of Modern Love then click here to watch just that I hope you enjoyed the video and have a wonderful day