It's just selfish and, you know, if you want to leave, then leave.

Like, if you're not happy, tell your partner you're not happy.

If there's work to be done, do it.

Because once a cheater, always a cheater kind of thing.

And the reason why there's some truth to that is because unless you do the work, you're going to end up picking the same partner.

You're going to end up creating the same narratives and having the same results.

All right, Adam, welcome to the Man Talks show.

How are you doing today?

Pretty good. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Of course, of course.

I mean, why a book about a man's guide to partner betrayal?

Why a book specifically for men who have experienced betrayal?

For the very reason is there isn't one, really.

There hasn't been one, really, until now.

You know, I'm a therapist, and most of the resources out there always refer to the man as being the one that does the cheating.

And I felt like it was time.

I have a lot of clients in my practice that have experienced infidelity in some shape or form.

And then also myself, over 13 years ago, my ex-wife had an affair.

So it was just kind of time.

It was also kind of time for me to face that shadow myself and to really dig into some of my own story.

And I realized I still had some healing to do.

What do you think the stigmas are that men experience when they are the recipient of infidelity, when their partners cheated on them?

You know, most of the men I work with, it's shame-based.

It just can't happen to a man.

A man has to be strong.

You know, there's embarrassment.

A lot of men I work with, they want to pretend that it never happened.

So they just kind of keep moving through life and all their responsibilities, being a husband, a father, their job, etc.

And then, of course, society tells men, right, we can't feel, we can't express feelings, we can't talk, it's not safe.

You have to be stoic and strong.

I think it's a lot of that that happens for men.

Do you think that, because I always try and do my best to take in some of the social commentary around therapy, personal development, and kind of get a sense of the landscape of what is being said.

I do think that what often happens in talking about infidelity specifically and betrayal within relationships where it's, we'll just talk about a heterosexual relationship, where it's the woman who has been unfaithful or betrayed in some capacity.

It is interesting to see the volume of content that is out there that inevitably, like either immediately or very soon thereafter, makes the man responsible for her betrayal.

And so I do think that there's some of this, and I'm curious to get your take on why that is.

Like why is it that men seem to take a lot of the blame even when it's the woman who has had the affair or betrayed him?

I mean, that's a whole separate podcast, right?

I mean, there's, you know, I have a funny,

I have an answer and I'll have an answer, but I'll just tell you a funny quick story.

Today at lunch, my wife and I, we went to this hamburger place, and I ordered mine as a lettuce wrap, and my wife got hers stacked with the bun and all the stuff.

And when the waiter came, he naturally started putting the lettuce wrap in front of my wife.

And I think it's the same difference, right?

I think that is how we are trained.

That is how we are programmed.

I think I see so much out there in the media.

I see that toxic masculinity.

I think even men are taught or told it's okay to cheat or it's okay to be that person or to have this huge sexual hunger.

And I think that's the narrative that's just been ingrained, if you will, maybe that collective unconscious.

I think it's the story society tells us.

And like a lot of the stories society tells us, it's a big lie.

It's just not true.

Statistically, I think they say something like 30% of marriages, the man cheats on the woman, and they say about 18% the other way around.

However, it's underreported.

I think it's probably equal from some of the things I see and what I've seen clinically.

I don't know if I answered your question, but now I'm hungry for a hamburger again.

I mean, a good hamburger will always do.

I do think that we as men often, whether it's social and cultural or whether we're prone to that, that there's a kind of inclination towards taking on personal responsibility.

And I think the other thing is that normally when you look at divorce rates, something like 72% of divorces are initiated by women.

And so there's kind of this notion that's sort of dependent on state, but average is 72%.

And so there's this notion that the divorce is happening because there's something wrong that the man is doing and that the fault resides with him.

And I think that same thing takes hold when an affair has happened and there's not an equal responsibility of like, well, probably both of you are contributing to this dysfunction in some capacity.

And maybe one person has more ownership than the other, but I think that that's a very important piece.

Like when you're working with a couple around betrayal, and let's just talk about infidelity specifically, how important is it to ensure that both people see their part in the dance?

How do you go about that?

Where should a couple who has experienced this infidelity begin?

Yeah, that's a great question.

The first thing I want to kind of back up because I think, depending upon the situation, but most, it does take two to tangle.

I always feel like the betrayed has a part.

However, really in betrayal work,

I don't always like to have the betrayed for their healing and their process to deal with that first because I think they're dealing with the shock and the ego injury and there's so much trauma happening.

But I'll tell you like in my book, it's actually, I know it's chapter 14 because when I originally wrote my book, ironically what you just brought up,

I left that completely out.

And two of my best friends questioned me on that and challenged me.

And what I realized was is I didn't want to look at that part myself.

I didn't want to own that I had a part.

And it's probably a bad metaphor, but one of the things I kind of realized and I think about like through the affair that my ex-wife had, it was kind of like I put the bullets on the table, but she picked them up.

She put them in the gun and she fired it.

And I think for the betrayed, it's a chance to look at how was I playing small in the relationship?

How was I not holding boundaries?

Asking, like understanding and asking for my wants and needs and very possibly not being love avoidant.

I feel like I was really scared to ask for what I wanted in my first marriage.

And because of that, it created an imbalance, right?

What I'm getting at is though even with all of that, that never gives a person a reason, an excuse for infidelity.

It gives you a reason to ask your partner what's going on or ask for more help or to discover is this going to work or not.

But it never gives permission.

And I think that's the important part that I always try to make sure the guys, the men I work with understand and know.

I can hear Internet chatter in my mind at most points.

Because I'm so used to, you know, I don't respond to most Internet comments.

But I do really read through what people are saying.

And I think for better or for worse, there's a pretty big perspective that women have a harder time taking accountability.

And it's kind of an Internet meme.

And I don't know if that's true or not across the board.

I don't know if there's even relevance in getting into it.

But I do think that sometimes for men there's this either knee jerk reaction for them to take full responsibility.

Like I've seen guys who their wife has cheated on them.

And two days after they're like, I've forgiven her.

It's okay. We just need to move on.

And it was my fault.

And it's kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like hold on, buddy.

I have that happen too.

So tell me about the crisis that happens right after the infidelity.

Like what does a couple go through?

How can a man start to navigate that crisis that right after a betrayal, whether it's lying, infidelity, some type of financial betrayal, there's always that crisis moment right after.

How do we start to walk through that?

Yeah, great question.

And also you just made me think.

Man, Conor, thanks for making me relive all my trauma here.

But just an interesting story.

When my ex-wife told me about her affair, and I remember sitting at the table,

I think one of the first things I said to her was like, I wonder what my part was.

Like I instantly, and what you're getting at is what I see a lot of men do, is we're by trait, we're fixers.

I'm going to fix this.

This isn't going to go any further.

And so I see a lot of that happening.

As far as the patterns you're asking, like at the start of discovery of a betrayal, there's going to be a lot of trauma.

There's going to be a lot of anger.

There's going to be that shock that's going to be going through it.

And when that happens, it's really, I want to say, almost impossible to really know or understand what you've just heard.

And it's going to be really almost impossible for the two of you to fix anything.

I think you have to sit in that shock.

You have to sit in that wound.

I remember for me, and I always refer to myself as an example, because I didn't have the resources that there's a little bit more now today, and I'm trying to create them myself for other men.

But I was in a men's group.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the Mankind Project.

And I was in that, and I had my men's group, my band of brothers, and what I found was being in a place where I can just share all my feelings and the anger and the sadness gave me the ability to process and to find that clarity to where then I could be grounded and I can be in that way where I was able to start to look at what was going to have to happen next.

And that's when you get to do the work, right?

The initial part, there's not much that can happen.

I mean, there's a lot of pain and a lot of confusion.

And for men, the ego gets in the way most often than not, like the fixer or like you were saying, no, we're good.

I forgive her, right?

I think that's a little bit of the ego playing in.

I mean, I think just to come back on this part to make it sort of clear, how important to the repair process if it is a man and a woman and she's had an affair or betrayed him, how important to the repair process is her taking accountability?

Well, if they're going to reconcile, it's vital.

My ex didn't want to do that.

I have a lot of clients that their partners are not open at looking at their part.

And that could come from their own shame or their own anger or whatever it might be.

But what works best and what I always see that heals is when the man's doing their work with a therapist or a betrayal coach or someone like you and the partner's doing the same thing.

And you have to almost do the individual work first before you can come together and do the couple's work because the couple's work is really to heal the relationship.

You can't heal the relationship till you start to heal yourself, till you start to understand the wounds and how we got here.

So that would be the pattern for me.

That's where I see the most success.

I want to take a little bit of a tactical approach to some of this stuff.

So you fill in anywhere that doesn't necessarily need to be tactical and I'll hold the tactical line because I think that part of what happens that I see a lot of men go into is that crisis mode of give me the plan.

Like my life has been rocked.

Everything's obliterated.

I don't know what to think now and I don't know what ground to stand on.

And so I'm going to approach this in our conversation just that you and the listener know from a place of trying to give a kind of – and I think your book really does that.

Your book really is just like a tactical plan for men who have experienced some type of betrayal.

I'll just say that.

I'll say that straight out, which I think is fantastic.

What are some of the things that men do in response to betrayal that potentially make things worse?

Because I think that's – like I want to give the like, don't do this.

Like let's move away from that and let's move towards this over here.

So what are some of the things that we do in response to betrayal that make things worse?

Man, I wish I knew that question before so I can really think about it.

But I have a couple off the top of my head things that I've seen happen.

The first thing is it's not your job to punish your partner.

Like trust me, the betrayer, even if they're going to do the work or not, there's a part – they're beating themselves up already.

So there's no need to punish them.

There's no need for you to lash out.

There's no need to – I've had clients where they like cut their wives off like financially and they try to regain control in their – I guess their masculinity, their bravado.

So I would never do that.

The other thing I've had a lot of people do is – well, they get even.

So they get to go have an affair or have that one-night stand or whatever it is.

And I can promise everyone out there, you getting even like that will never make this easier and it doesn't make the playing field easier.

I would say it makes it worse in some cases, makes it more difficult to reconcile.

And then I see a lot of men spiral into like that competitiveness and that jealousy.

So those would be off the top of my head.