For this session of the Sex Plus Symposium, we were joined by sex therapist expert Tammy Nelson to discuss infidelity recovery. 

Tammy Nelson, Ph.D., is a sex and relationship expert, an international speaker, an author and a licensed psychotherapist with thirty years of experience working with individuals and couples. In private practice, she focuses on helping people of all ages, orientations and genders find love, healing and passion.

She is the director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute and teaches at several universities, is a TEDx speaker, and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a board certified sexologist, an AASECT certified sex therapist, a licensed professional counselor, a certified Imago Relationship Therapist and a licensed alcohol and drug abuse counselor.

Dr. Tammy is the author of many books and her most recent project is Integrative Sex & Couples Therapy. She has many other eBooks, chapters and articles on topics including sexuality, desire, affair recovery, monogamy issues, open marriage, online infidelity, intentional divorce, passionate relationships and everything related to couples.

She consults with institutes, think tanks and corporations on communication, integrity and relationships. At this time of great global stress, Dr. Tammy helps people cope with working from home, disruption across all industries and social distancing. She has been a featured expert in many publications and writes for the Psychotherapy Networker, is a blogger for Huffington Post and YourTango and can be followed on Facebook, Twitter and her blog.

There Is No “Normal”

When you talk about sex with people, there’s no training that says “okay, this is what normal sexuality is.” Normal sexuality is not a destination we’re arriving at as people.

Normal really doesn’t mean anything. For therapists who haven’t been trained in sex therapy, there is the potential for bias and countertransference, or projecting your own feelings or experience onto a client situation, that occurs when people seek help with sex therapy. 

There is healthy sex that occurs for people, and there’s the sex people want to get to, but there isn’t a normal sense of sexuality.

Eros — the root of the word erotic — is a life force and energy that is inherent in everyone. We all want to feel passionate, alive and in tune with that part of us that makes us feel super erotic. 

Couples often can have “the best sex they’ve ever had in their life” after they get back together and are confused by that. Part of that is because attraction happens in the space in between you and your partner. In times of infidelity, you can suddenly see your partner as someone you don’t even know. There are many thoughts and feelings tangled within sex after cheating.

Pandemic Problems

Throughout the pandemic, many women have lost jobs or been required to stay home with their children due to lack of childcare, school and hosts of other things. This has resulted in an excess of domesticity. Sex, pleasure and desire can decrease with domesticity, exhaustion and parenting responsibilities which can result in many sexless, lockdown relationships. One study found that, the majority of couples had less sex and less connection during the pandemic. 

There is a certain part of our brain that needs to be a “seeker,” whether it’s adventure or another unique experience. When a person is out and about regularly, that part of the brain can be triggered by the simplest of things, such as searching for a parking space. 

When that part of the brain begins to be stifled, it turns to other avenues to find something new. For example, if someone exhausted all streaming shows during the pandemic, they may have turned to pornography to find something new. 

Others who identify as a nester thrived during the pandemic and relished the time at home. This created a clash between the two partners. 

As a result, affairs and extramarital relationships increased during the pandemic or at the very least, many partners were more inclined to seek out a new experience. 

Model of Sexual Wellness

Sites like Ashley Madison saw an increase of about 17% during the pandemic with about a 1-to-1 ratio of women and men seeking partners. These people weren’t necessarily meeting in person for sexual encounters, but they were instead having sexual experiences online with one another.

How do we navigate helping people heal after a new sex life or a sex life after infidelity? Infidelity is an erotic injury — an injury to your erotic life, not only an injury to your companionship. 

A few key things to keep in mind:

• Remember: there is no normal. 

• Integrate all aspects of self into the relationship. 

• Reinforce individuation — you can’t have an erotic life without both people being individuals. 

• Switch from the goal of healing around sex to focus more on pleasure.

Relationship Dysfunction

People typically seek couples sex therapy for two primary, but different, reasons: neglect or trauma.

• Neglect can stem from boredom, erotic shutdown, desire discrepancies and different assumptions. 

• Trauma can be a result of infidelity, illness, children, job loss, porn or exits including avoiding sex, other ways of being intimate.

There are two parts of any relationship: companionship and eroticism.

Companionship consists of everyday life and how well you get along with one another and manage your family life. 

Eroticism is where the passion lives. This isn’t simply where intercourse takes place. It also includes the feelings that define your connection. 

The erotic part of a relationship is where the healing happens after infidelity. Forgiveness is not the goal of recovery either. Forgiveness is a power struggle that puts the responsibility back on the victim to heal the relationship.

Forgiveness doesn’t truly happen unless there’s empathy. There needs to be an understanding between the couple. From the victim’s point of view, there’s understanding of what happened but not conceding to agreement or submission. From the offender’s point of view, there’s a recognition of why a partner is feeling the way they are feeling.

Modern Sexual Dysfunctions

A sexual dysfunction is the significant inability to respond sexually or to experience sexual pleasure.

There is a difference between arousal and desire. 

• Arousal is the capacity to have sex.

• Desire is the will to have sex. 

Men typically are the ones diagnosed with hyper-sexual behavior, however. Things such as affairs, sex addictions or porn consumption are thought of as a more male-dominated activity.

Women are typically diagnosed with low sexual desire. The cause is usually attributed to being more tired. With more responsibilities falling on their shoulders, exhaustion and stress lead to less sexual desire and arousal. 

Because we are a performance-driven society, we want to be on all the time. Men are generally recognized for being “human-doings” versus “human-beings” because their worth is attributed to what they do.

Anything less than the standard sexual performance from society is considered a sexual dysfunction.

There is little — if any — research on how to restore the erotic connection in couples after infidelity.

The typical agreement in monogamy, or marriage, is that you won’t sleep with anyone but your partner. So, if you do, you know you’re breaking that agreement. That means the first betrayal is to yourself. 

Conversely, another breach of the monogamy agreement is withholding sex from your partner, but expecting them not to have sex with anyone else. 

A monogamous relationship consisting of sex means there needs to be common ground on what is expected from each partner. 

Recovery Process for Couples

When any kind of transgression occurs or an issue arises, it’s important to seek couples therapy. Individual therapy can also be helpful, but in any relationship, couples therapy can be the most beneficial. 

Erotic recovery is not about going backwards. The reality is, you can never go back.

Erotic recovery moves couples out of the power struggle in their sex life and into a new manifesto of erotic satisfaction. 

Affairs are not always a pathological response to a relationship. Sometimes, an affair can balance out a couple. There are instances where people cheat to stay in a relationship.

Typically, the person being cheated on is angry with themselves because they feel as though they should have known about their partner’s betrayal. Learning to trust your intuition again takes a lot longer to rebuild than the couple’s recovery. The victim generally takes longer to heal because of this.

In part two of this session, we’ll dig deeper into the meaning of infidelity and steps to recovery for you and your partner.