The Grey Layers Of Cheating

Reading The State of Affairs was frustrating and validating at the same time.
It wasn’t a mirror to my exact situation..not really. He didn’t cheat and come back. He didn’t seek repair. He didn’t reflect. He disappeared.

Still, the book held something I needed: it framed infidelity not just as a betrayal of another person, but as a crisis of self. It helped me understand that cheating, avoidance, and emotional running aren’t just about desire or failure, they’re about unresolved identity. About fear, shame, trauma, unmet needs.

It helped me give language to what happened to me without turning it into a pity story.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t get a version of infidelity that could be repaired. I didn’t get the post-crisis clarity or the mutual desire to unpack what it meant.
I got silence.

What happens when the person who caused the wound vanishes before even acknowledging the damage?

That’s not something Esther could explain fully.. because she writes for couples trying to understand each other, not for the ones left in the ruins alone.

But I kept reading because I needed to know something: Was this about me? Did I miss something? Was I not enough?

And the truth is: No.

Perel helped me see that sometimes betrayal isn’t planned. Sometimes people fall into their own darkness and pull you in with them.
He didn’t betray me to punish me.He betrayed us because he couldn’t hold the weight of something real and instead of rising, he ran.

He didn’t choose me. But more importantly: he didn’t choose himself.

The book talks about how people create secret lives not always to destroy the relationship, but to preserve some hidden part of themselves. I believe that’s true. I think he wasn’t ready to confront what real intimacy asks of a person. I think he used secrecy as a survival tool but one that caused irreparable harm.

He didn’t want to face himself, so he made it look like the relationship was too much.
When really, it was the mirror it held up that scared him.

There’s a part of the book that says something like: “This isn’t your fault… but it is your responsibility now.”

That line hit me hard. Because it applies to both of us, to me, in my grief, and to him, in his denial.

I'm not responsible for the way he left me. But I am responsible for the way I carry this forward. I can’t force an apology. I can’t rewrite the past.

S..