Loneliness and Infidelity
Understanding the difference of desiring connection, and being totally averse to loneliness.
Loneliness can be a big factor in infidelity situations — and sometimes in surprising ways.
Many of us have an outsized aversion to loneliness. We fear feeling lonely before we actually feel loneliness, and we don’t like feeling lonely when we are feeling that way.
So sometimes we go to great lengths to attempt to avoid feeling lonely — or to get rid of the feeling, do feel it.
And sometimes, the things we do in an attempt to not feel lonely have consequences that we do not like.
Consequences is kind of a loaded word, but what I mean is simply that any actions we take will have some kind of outcome, or result. And although the things we do in an attempt to avoid feeling loneliness may indeed help us temporarily avoid feeling that way, they may have other consequences, or other results, too. And we may not like those results.
More specifically, when we are terrified of loneliness, we may depend on a person, or persons, in an attempt to avoid feeling lonely or deal with feeling lonely. We may pursue or continue relationships that we aren’t really all that excited about, because being in ANY relationship seems like a better option than being alone — or “alone” — and potentially feeling lonely. And this of course can have implications for anybody and any relationship, even if infidelity is not a factor, but this kind of thing comes up in infidelity situations a lot.
For example, when someone is considering leaving an established relationship for their affair partner, they may be reluctant to do so — even if they really WANT to leave their committed relationship, and give themselves the chance to turn their affair relationship into an above-board relationship. They may have come to see their established relationship as their source of comfort, and stability, and security — and the idea of not having that relationship may scare the shit out of them. And so they choose to stay in it. Because taking a leap of faith to leave that known source of companionship seems too damn terrifying.
This can keep people from leaving relationships they really want to leave, and from pursuing relationships that they really want to pursue. Or it can keep them in the limbo of indecision for weeks or months or years or longer.
Of course, it’s also possible to feel deeply lonely even if you are in a romantic relationship.
Sometimes we think that if we have a partner, we won’t feel lonely, but a lot of people feel excruciatingly lonely within their romantic relationships. And sometimes people deal with that by finding another relationship to soothe the loneliness they’re experiencing within the existing one — and of course, sometimes this is done in a way that constitutes cheating.
Someone feels lonely within the context of their marriage, but they don’t want to deal with what’s going on in their marriage, so they look for someone else to connect with. And that connection may relieve the person of their loneliness, but now they’re in a marriage they aren’t all that excited about and they have an infidelity situation on their hands that might become quite a thing to deal with in its own right. So in “solving” the problem of their loneliness, they may have created a few others for themselves.
Here’s the thing, people. It’s TOTALLY legitimate to want companionship. It totally legitimate to want to have a romantic partner, or partners, that you connect with in ways that feel great to you. But there’s a difference between desiring connection, and being totally averse to loneliness.
Quite simply, not having much of a tolerance for loneliness can lead us into situations that can be a total pain in the ass. It can lead to a complicated and torturous love life, instead of a satisfying and reasonably simple love life.
The good news is that when we begin to solve for loneliness itself, dealing with your infidelity situation in particular or your love life in general gets a whole lot easier. We can learn how to tolerate loneliness — instead of dealing with it in a way that creates a whole bunch of undesirable consequences. We can learn how to relate to loneliness in such a way that we no longer have to make decisions about our relationships that are driven by a fear of loneliness, or a desire to avoid it.
