During a TED talk, the Belgian therapist, Esther Perel commented that “An affair in the digital age is death by a thousand cuts.” When I encountered her presentation, the stunning reality hit me… ‘there’s a connection between affairs and self-cutting’.
I don’t know if she realizes the full impact of her comment for many people. Although the term “death by a thousand cuts” originates with a book on the history of Chinese torture, the term takes on new meaning when paired with affairs.
I understand what Esther said in terms of how with social media and online photos, there are reminders of the affair coming at you in an endless loop. A person feels bombarded by the constant reminders.
Not only are there numerous reminders, the ‘long tail‘ of the internet means that their shelf life has no expiration date. In previous generations, a person could count on time to eventually wash away the past.
With the internet, it’s always on, always in your face and always a click away.
The ‘thousand cuts’ portion of her comment is also true on another level. Whenever you have intense emotions, self-blame, rejection and possible abuse,where there is limited if not loss of control, there the likelihood of someone turning to self-cutting as a way to cope is high.
The more popular term for self-cutting is ‘self-harm’. Some therapists even refer to it as ‘decorating‘ as a way to remove the stigma associated with the self mutilating practice.
Affairs have rejection, intense emotions, self-blame, and abuse, if not all of them. There are also the themes of self-punishment and guilt with affairs as well.
Affairs provide the perfect storm for those of you who are prone to self-cut or harm themselves. Not only is there a perfect storm of contributing issues, there is the compounding issues of shame and secrecy as well.
You may have struggled with those issues earlier in life. The affair triggers those old memories and feelings. When those old memories and feelings are triggered, the old pain and old ways of dealing with the pain come back as well.
In some cases, there may be themes of sacrifice involved as well. Oftentimes the person on the outside, whether it is you or the lover often feels that you have make the sacrifices or by means of a sacrifice, you can somehow draw your spouse back.
Although in most cases, you don’t act on such thoughts, when you’re hurting, you find unwanted thoughts filling your mind.
What isn’t clear is how strong the connection between affairs and self-cutting is. This goes back to all the secrecy and shame surrounding self-harm.
In working with affairs, I often encounter a barrier of secrecy surrounding it. With self-cutting you find another level of secrecy behind the one surrounding the affair. It becomes a secret within a secret.
One researcher found a common element of love relationships gone wrong with many of the self cutters in Sri Lanka. When the taboo subject of self-cutting and affairs are finally discussed openly, there’s likely to be similar patterns in other countries as well.
Western countries have more negative associations with self-cutting than do non-Western nations. Those negative associations are part of what makes open discussion of the affair-cutting connection challenging.
If you’re among those who are harming yourself, by means of cutting or other activities, you need to bring this out in the open. Keeping the behavior secret intensifies the pain.
Learning ways of dealing with your own emotions is critical before you handling the emotions of your spouse or your marriage as a whole.
You can make it out of ‘the pit of pain’. It’s not as bottomless as you assume. The more emotional health you have, there better able you will be to deal with the affair.
If you are one of those stuck ‘in the pain’ which I call ‘trauma mode’, there’s hope. Much like any mechanical device can get stuck, your emotions can get stuck in pain as well.
For the “how tos” of getting unstuck from the pain, the video “Dealing With Affair Trauma” helps you move past that. You’ll understand what kept you stuck and ways of moving past the pain.
Best Regards,
Jeff
