Relationships are Like Gardens Part II: Success Requires Skills and Planning

This is part 2 of a 5-part series drawing the analogy between gardening and building good relationships. Part I talked about how knowledge is central to success in both endeavors. Here in Part II, I discuss how the acquisition of the right skills, and the development of a sound plan are important to success in gardening and close relationships.

I introduced this series with a very sad tale about how I tried once to grow cilantro and failed miserably because I didn't know how to do it. Not knowing how to do it prevented me from being able to generate a plan for when and where to plant (as it turns out, I failed on both these points) or knowing whether I had the skills to do it (I still wonder if I am capable of seeing the difference between the edible first round of leaves and the frilly, lacy, bitter leaves that the plant produces as it matures).

My cilantro fiasco (as I'm now calling it) was rooted in a lack of knowledge, but that lack of knowledge ultimately resulted in my total inability to know how to plan for planting and then tend the plant once it started to grow. These same pitfalls in relationships can cause them to fail to flourish.

Strategy: Identifying a Desired Outcome and Developing a Viable Plan to Get There

The word "strategy" can be off-putting for people in reference to their relationships. Strategy sounds like something we do when we are playing games or going to war - both of which are categorically terrible comparisons for relationship management. Curiously, when we begin what we hope is a romantic relationship, we often strategize like champs. We know what we want (to form a romantic relationship with potential-partner X) and we know how to get there (by a series of tactical moves that are part of a larger playing-hard-to-get strategy that minimizes our availability and maximizes our desirability).

Something happens, though, as we become confident in the persistence of the relationship. We stop approaching it strategically. We let the relationship, for lack of better language, "do what it's going to do". Here's the thing about relationships "doing what they are going to do" - they don't. Relationships don't do a thing. Relationships are a result of human action. If we don't behave well, our relationships won't be well.

If we want our relationships to be well, our over-arching strategy should be to take care of the relationship and each other. If caring for ourselves, our partners, and our bond is what is at the front of our minds every time (and I do mean every time) we communicate, then our tactics should match that.

Let's take a recent example from my own life. My sister and I were hanging out a couple of weeks ago. I had intended that we would hang out together with my niece, Doodle, and have dinner and catch up. She spent the first two hours of my visit working on something else and only half-listening to me during our visit. I became increasingly frustrated but said nothing to her about it until I had utterly lost my patience and felt hurt and dismissed as a result of her inattention. My hurt and anger caused me to lose sight of that big relationship objective of caring for our bond and I yelled at her to stop what she was doing.

This was a major, massive tactical fail on my part which happened because I was more concerned with expressing my annoyance with her behavior and getting her to stop rather than the bigger strategic objective of taking care of our relationship. As you can imagine, my behavior hurt and upset my sister, and we proceeded to waste the better part of the next 3 hours yelling and crying. A mildly annoying situation turned into a huge, hurtful incident because I prioritized my own emotion over the relationship. I made a bad tactical decision that I would have avoided if I adhered to my strategy of caring for us both.

If we have a good plan and commit to adhering to it, we make better choices and have better relationships (and cilantro).

Strategy Can't Work without Skill

Okay, so it's all well and good that we decide that our primary strategic objective is to care for our partners, ourselves, and our relationships and that we should devise a set of tactics that enable the meeting of that objective. The trouble is, we may not have the skills to do so.

I can assure you, that while I don't remotely have the skills to be able to grow cilantro, that I absolutely have the skills to be able to have good conflict. I simply chose not to use them in the situation with my sister that I referenced above.* But what if I didn't have the skills? What if I knew that barking wouldn't end well, but didn't know what else I could do? What if I didn't know how to express frustration and ask for us to change what we were doing without sounding angry? Would I be doomed to failure in relationships? No. Certainly not.

Skill comes from practice, but we have to practice the right things. If you have a friend who is good at the thing you want to get better at, ask if they might role-play and practice while they give you feedback. There are also people who provide relationship and communication coaching** (myself, included) who, like an athletic coach or trainer, will identify skills fundamentals that need improvement and help you to develop them. You can ask your partners to tell you how they would prefer for you to behave in a given situation. If they can alert you to the troublesome behavior and motivate you in the midst of a conversation to do a better behavior, this can help you grow as well.

Growth is the End-Game

In the case of cilantro or relationships, what we're ultimately trying to do is grow them. Our closest relationships are the most valuable things many of us have. In order to grow them, to make them closer, warmer, more stable, we need to be mindful about how we approach communicating within them. We've gotta be knowledgeable, strategic, and skilled if we intend to reap the enormous benefits of our closest bonds.

Of course, all of the knowledge, strategy, and skill in the world can't prevent the occasional pest or hassle from creeping into our relationships and cilantro beds. We'll come to that in my next post, so stay tuned for Part III.

Notes:

* Yes, dear readers, being an expert doesn't necessarily mean I always do the right thing. I'm well-educated, but I'm sure not perfect. And yes, I absolutely did apologize to my sister.

** If you're looking for a relationship coach, scrutinize credentials. There are lots of people who will sell relationship coaching services with no educational or experiential credentials that would justify their charging you for their alleged expertise. Find someone whose academic or experiential credentials are clearly identifiable, and ensure that their degrees, certifications, or experience are in an appropriate field (e.g., you don't want an MBA in Management teaching you interpersonal conflict management but they may be perfect for business communication coaching). Many certified legal mediators with specialties in family mediation may also offer coaching services.

Relationships are Like Gardens. Go on, Roll Your Eyes, then Keep Reading

Love is like a garden - feed it, tend it, and it will bloom. Blah blah blah.

Some cliche analogy isn't where this post is going. Instead, I want to share a comparison I often use to talk about the choices we make and actions we take in our relationships. Analogy is useful for teaching, and the big-picture comparison I use to talk about relationships is gardening.

To make my point that relationships are basically like tomato plants, I'm going to post a 5-part series on why building good relationships is like growing a garden. Each post will deal with one of the five following characteristics of both relationship building and gardening:

They require knowledge.

They require skills and planning to execute well.

They require ongoing tending.

They present their fair share of pests, annoyances, and hassles.

They should result in something that feeds you.

I'm going to kick off the series by addressing the first point:

Building Relationships and Growing Gardens both Require Knowledge
I tried to grow cilantro once. It was a miserable failure. I was mystified by my inability to grow cilantro because I was under the impression that growing it was about as easy as growing a wild onion (i.e., it's easy to be successful by accident). Apparently, that is not the case.

So, the question is: why did I fail? The answer is: because I didn't know what the blazes I was doing.

It's my feeling that most people attempt to manage relationships in the same way that I attempted to grow cilantro - with the misguided assumption that they are natural and they will essentially grow themselves. We come to this impression because most of us have had relationships forged for/with us for a very long time with little thought, work, or input of any sort on our parts. We form relationships with our parents, siblings, classmates, neighborhood kids, etc. We meet people, tell them things about ourselves, we like the same things, we become friends, and tah-dah - instarelationship.

That our relationships are forged for us for most of our formative years sets us up, I think, to assume that we inherently know how to form, grow, and maintain relationships. That assumption is as problematic as my assumption that I can grow cilantro because it's a plant and plants grow by themselves all the time. When I say it like that, it sounds slightly crazy that we all think we just get how to be in relationships.

Here's the truth: we have to learn how to do relationships the same way we need to learn how to grow cilantro or tomatoes. Part of learning means understanding that why an action (giving a plant too much sun, or yelling in a conflict) results in one outcome or another (plant death, or hurt and anger). I am positive that had I known the first thing about how to plant cilantro, I would have been more successful than I was. Similarly, if we want to grow relationships, we need an education about how to do so.

There are any number of ways to educate yourself. Take classes in communication or social psychology to understand what scholars have learned about relationships. Seek out relationship coaching or couples therapy to learn about how to interact with one another more fruitfully. Read a relationship blog.

Better yet, you should learn about your partner. Talk to your partner about how something they do in a conflict, for example, affects you (and vice versa). Deliberately try communicating differently to see if you get a different outcome (because whatever the outcome is, you've learned something). Talk to each other about how your experiments are going and adapt your communication to what you've learned about one another.

Whatever you learn, how ever you learn it, you should be learning it mindfully. We improve our odds of having successful relationships when we are deliberate and purposeful about learning what we need to in order to address our most important relationship concerns.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that I never googled how to grow cilantro. How easy that would have been. Instead, I embarked on an adventure armed with nothing but a desire for fresh cilantro all the time. I ended up with nothing to show for it but frustration. Be better about approaching your relationships than I was about approaching gardening. If you do, you will amass knowledge and information that will help you plan better, acquire more skills, and  have more tools in your repertoire to be able to succeed at building solid relationships.

Stay tuned for Part II. 

Lesson 3, Part II: Managing Conflict: Successful Conflict Means Everybody Wins

A while back, I wrote a post on differentiating between a conflict and a fight. Really, if you haven't read it, you ought to. It will make this post make more sense . . . and it's just a darn good lesson to learn.

Today, I wish to revisit the issue of conflict in relationships and talk about what makes for good conflict.

Remember that a conflict is a conversation between two people who have stated their needs to one another and found that their needs are incompatible. Conflict isn't a sign that the relationship is dysfunctional. In fact, it suggests that you and your partner recognize that an important function of your relationship is to meet your respective needs (our lesson on what I affectionately refer to as Glowworm Theory gets at this).

How to Have Bad Conflict
Conflict goes awry in a relationship, though, when we don't express our needs in a manner that demonstrates respect for our partners. Yes, we form relationships with the expectation that they meet our needs. But, our expectation that our relationship partner meets our needs doesn't entitle us to whatever we want, nor does it obligate our partners to give it. This sense of entitlement is often the reason that we are motivated to behave badly in conflict. We feel like our partners have to do what we ask. When they refuse, for whatever reason, we take this personally. This displeasure with our partners' refusal to meet our needs often manifests as anger or hurt.

If we feel hurt or angry enough, we might choose to demonstrate our negative emotions rather than attempting to resolve the conflict issue in a productive manner. Some things we do in destructive conflict include:

• Avoiding the issue or your partner
• Yelling or doing other things that express our negative emotions
• Acting defensive or refusing to take responsibility for unreasonable requests
• Insulting or criticizing our partner
• Being emotionally manipulative (e.g., trying to make our partners feel guilty)
• Retaliating (i.e., doing something we know will hurt our partners because they hurt us and we owe them one)
• Engaging in violent actions including threats, damaging property, or harming our partners

If we do these things in a conflict, we show our partners the worst version of ourselves. If we show our partners the worst version of who we are, it makes little sense that we we should expect our partners to give us the best of themselves.

How to Have Good Conflict
Clearly, there are plenty of things that we can do in a conflict episode that can adversely impact our relationships. There are, however, plenty of things that we can do to make sure that a conversation about what we need doesn't turn the relationship toxic. So, here's some strategy for you for how to make your conflicts work for your relationship rather than against it.

• Really think about whether the need you're asking your partner to fulfill is reasonable.
  A reasonable request is one that:
  a) you have the right to expect from your partner,
  b) that your partner has the means to give you, and
  c) that your partner is comfortable giving you.
• State your need in a manner that is respectful and consistent with the rules of the relationship.
  You can't reasonably expect your partner to do anything to meet your needs if you express your needs aggressively, passive aggressively, ambiguously, or in any manner that doesn't promote clear, honest, respectful talking about your needs.
• Identify whether the incompatibility that exists between your needs and those of your partner is real or perceived.
  This point is more easily addressed with an example: Sue has a bad day at work and comes home to her romantic partner, Bob. She asks Bob if he will sit with her on the couch and hold her while she tells him about her awful day. Bob replies by saying that he can't do that because he has a paper he has to finish for the next day. Bob perceives that he cannot both provide support to his partner and complete his work. If they let the conversation get past the initial request, though, Bob would have found out that Sue really only intended to sit and snuggle for about 15 minutes because she, too, had other things she needed to get done before bed. Surely, Bob can spare the 15 minutes. Because he can spare the 15 minutes, his need to write his paper is, in reality, not at all incompatible with Sue's need for support.
• Be open to negotiation.
  In conflicts, we generally start by stating our need and our preferred means by which that need should be met. In the example of Sue and Bob above, Sue's ideal outcome was to be snuggled while she vented about her day as soon as she got home. Bob's ideal outcome was to be able to work on his paper, uninterrupted until it was finished. When we strip away all of the preferences and extras, all Sue wanted was support and to be held, and all Bob wanted was to finish his paper before his normal bedtime. If Sue and Bob would negotiate, they could talk through what their bottom lines are - what is it that they each really mean to achieve. Negotiation allows us to separate what we really need from the preferences we have about how that need gets met. This, in turn, promotes resolution.
• Shoot for collaboration, not compromise.
  I don't know about you, but the big conflict management strategy I learned in school was compromise. Teaching compromise to children is easier, I suppose, than teaching collaboration, but it breeds a shortsightedness about how to have really great conflict. Here's the fact about compromise: it means that everybody has to give something up. The word compromise means to reach an agreement by way of mutual concession. When we begin a conflict with the frame of mind that we are going to have to give something up to get what we need, we start the episode on the defense because we want to give up as little as possible. Our partners approach the conflict the same way, and the potential for excellent outcomes to arise is diminished. If, on the other hand, we approach conflict as a collaboration, we are in a different and more productive frame of mind. Here's the fact about collaboration: everybody wins (or at least has the potential to). The talking that we do in conflict should be, more than anything else, about how we get everything we both need. When we come at a conflict with the belief that everybody can get their needs met and that we don't have to start by giving something up, we tend to be more creative about how we solve the problem. We generate better ideas, we are more open to suggestions for alternative solutions, and we are thus more likely to arrive at a solution that is good for everybody. 

Good Conflict Makes Relationships Better
The majority of students to whom I have taught conflict management have come to me with the belief that conflict does harm to a relationship. They aren't wrong. Conflict can have very detrimental effects on a relationship - if we do it wrong. If we spend more time trying to inflict hurt or protect ourselves than negotiating the conflict issue, then yes, conflict can diminish relational quality. On the other hand, good conflicts draw people together. This happens because the trust, validation, and self-esteem that come from a successful collaboration makes us feel closer to and more invested in our partner. And all of that is on top of the fact that we resolved the initial conflict issue.

So you see, when we do conflict right, we get what we need, our partners get what they need and our relationships improve. Everybody wins.

Class dismissed.

Soapbox: To Get It, Ya Gotta Give It

I've titled this post "To Get It, Ya Gotta Give It" because this is the root of so many of our missteps in the way we manage expectations for other people. We tend to approach life with an exaggerated idea of the resources we are entitled to expect from other people - time, energy, money, company, love, affection, sex, respect, etc. Unfortunately, we tend to spend a disproportionately small amount of time thinking about the extent to which we have given enough of those resources to other people to warrant our expectation that we are entitled to receive them.

Do me a favor and think back to your grade school days when one of the first life lessons we were taught was the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When we are taught this as children, the point is that we should avoid treating each other badly if we expect others to treat us well.

As adults, it behooves us to consider this advice with a more sophisticated mindset. We should consider the Golden Rule as our own mindful establishment of parameters for how we should conduct ourselves in relationships, rather than just having the mindset that we should avoid doing unkind things to others.

Here are some things you ought to consider as you devise a strategy for doing unto others:

• Give the resources you want to receive.
• Show appreciation when you receive resources that you didn't expect or that you arguably haven't earned.
• Occasionally choose to give up resources to your partner that you feel like they haven't earned to help build a landscape of positivity and generosity in your relationship.
• Apologize for your failure to give resources that you should have . . . and then try better to provide those resources to avoid breeding resentment over unmet needs.
• Try not to suck.

Long story short: you can only expect to receive what you're willing to give. If all you're willing to give is nonsense or nothing, then you're not prepared to be in a relationship. Work on that.

*hops off soapbox*

Soapbox: "You have such potential" Isn't a Compliment

As my students and I begin another academic year, I think about the words we hear when we are feeling fresh, renewed, and motivated. Words like: excited, pride, optimism, and potential.

This word, “potential”, is the subject of this brief Soapbox post today.

My professorial colleagues and I often talk about students who “have potential”. When people who are young (like pre-pubescent young) are described as having potential, it is a compliment. It means that we see in a person raw material – talent, skill, intellect, whatever – that can be honed, cultivated, and harnessed into something possibly spectacular. To be sure, to be seen as inherently talented or gifted, is a compliment.

Unfortunately, we never reevaluate what it means to be told that we have potential as we move out of childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. I would contend that for a 20-something year old person to be identified as having potential is not quite the compliment that it might have been a decade earlier.

Here’s the thing about potential in adulthood: by the time we’re 20 or 30ish, should have met or harnessed it by now. That we still have potential in our adulthood means we aren’t working, executing, or getting the job done.

Don’t believe me? Think about the way language changes when we talk about people of varying ages who have potential. In reference to children, we often use a big adjective to describe potential, like “enormous” or “unlimited”. As we refer to people in late adolescence or early adulthood, the modifiers associated with having potential become less big, as in, “he has such potential”. Once a person gets past their early thirties and that person still has yet to meet or unleash their potential, we start talking about potential in the past tense – “he had so much potential. If only he had [insert action never taken to meet said potential here]”.

My point: as we come to the beginning of a new academic year (or wherever you are in your own life) consider whether you’re meeting your potential. Are you actively engaged in tapping every bit of raw material you possess, or are you letting it drift increasingly far away from your grasp? Potential isn’t limitless. We do have a window in which to begin to harness it. If we wait indefinitely for exactly the right impetus or circumstance to present itself before we begin our work, the window begins to close. As more time passes, the open space in the window shrinks, and the window becomes increasingly difficult to hurl open.
 
Don’t waste whatever raw material you were gifted. Seize it. Wield it. Use it to become more excellent than you are. It seems to me that if you do, you’ll end your life with no potential whatsoever, and I do believe that’s a good thing.

Lesson 7, Part II: Orgasm, the Human Brain, and Why People Cheat

This is Part II of a two-part post on infidelity in romantic relationships. Part I was a discussion of what constitutes cheating and you can read it here.

The object of this post is to try to address the question of why people commit infidelity. It's a long one, so I've inserted headings to let you find the parts of the post you are most interested in. I hope that you find it informative and interesting in spite of its length.

Introduction

If you've ever been cheated on, you know that the first question that comes to mind upon the discovery that your partner committed an unfaithful act is "why?". We want to understand or justify an act that is widely considered to be one of the most offensive relational betrayals a person can commit. Unfortunately, receiving an explanation for their behavior from an unfaithful partner is rarely satisfying, and often it hurts more than it helps. So, allow me to provide one (of many possible) explanations for infidelity.

Before I get to the part where I explain why I think people cheat, we need to have a conversation about sex and the human brain.

The Human Brain

The human brain is awesome. It's astounding what the human brain has allowed us to innovate. We have imagined, engineered, and created everything from the pyramids to a means by which we can travel to space.  The complexity of the human brain is, of course, what differentiates us from other mammals. Not only do we possess superior intellect than our mammalian cousins, but we also have a highly developed prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that is dedicated to uniquely human activities such impulse control and decision making. Where most animals do what they do out of instinct, human beings can reason their way into (or out of) any behavior. The prefrontal cortext, my friends, is the thing that keeps us from slapping people who have 30 items in the 20 items or less line, or from stealing an expensive but utterly spectacular pair of shoes. The prefrontal cortex is largely responsible for an orderly and organized human civilization.

Now, as excellent as the prefrontal cortex is for motivating sound judgment and self-control in human beings, sometimes it talks us out of engaging in some basic biological activities. Sometimes this is good - like when you actively decide not to pass gas in an elevator. Sometimes, this benefit is arguable - like when your brain talks you out of having sex with someone whom your body is sure will provide the genetic material for healthy and robust offspring. After all, without engaging in sexual intercourse with viable members of the opposite sex, human beings have no natural means by which to reproduce.

So here's the trouble: sometimes our animalness will tell us we ought to be getting it on with someone, but our humanness talks us out of it because doing so would violate social rules that tell us that we should control our sexual impulses. In other words, our brains are sometimes at war with our bodies.

The Amazing Orgasm

We might expect that the sophistication of the human brain would allow it to win any war it waged against the basic impulses of the body. That might be true if our bodies weren't engineered specifically to promote sexual desire and activity. Don't believe me? Well, then, it's time to talk about the Big O. Orgasms (especially males' orgasms) are essential for human reproduction. Their primary function is to release sperm in order to make them available to fertilize an egg. There is absolutely no reason that an orgasm needs to be particularly pleasurable in order to achieve this objective. Yet, it is; and extremely so. Were it not for the difficult-to-otherwise-achieve pleasure of an orgasm, people would be largely indifferent to engaging in sexual intercourse. If we take a lesson from the world's dwindling population of pandas, we know that indifference to engaging in sexual intercourse can endanger the survival of a species. That sex is delightful motivates human beings to do it, which ensures the continuation of humans on this planet. The particular pleasure associated with sex makes it sometimes difficult for the brain's prefrontal cortex to make the choice not to indulge in a sexual interaction with an available, attractive partner in spite of our commitment to exclusivity with someone else.

Okay, so we understand that biology is motivating. We also know that the human brain is designed to allow people to think about the consequences of their actions and choose to engage in an action or not depending on how we evaluate the consequences. We also know that in spite of knowing the consequences and rules, people sometimes choose to engage in rule-violating sexual contact.

Reported Explanations for Unfaithful Behavior 

So, the question is - why do some people let their bodies win out over their brains and end up cheating on their partners?

People who study infidelity have identified a number of explanations for this. I'll run down a few:
1. Sexual dissatisfaction with the primary partner (i.e, partner doesn't offer the kind of sex that you want with the frequency that you want)
2. Emotional dissatisfaction with the primary partner (i.e., the relationship isn't adequately intimate or fails to meet other non-sexual needs)
3. Boredom with the partner and the relationship (more likely the longer the relationship is)
4. Stronger orientation to rule-breaking, sensation-seeking, or other behaviors that are considered risky
5. Attitudes toward sex that promote more sexually promiscuous behavior, or negative attitudes toward monogamy

The list could go on.

At the end of the day, though, a person who cheats is confronted with the the following situation: I have made a commitment to be in an exclusive relationship with my partner, which means I cannot pursue or accept sexual contact from anyone else. BUT, I want to have sexual contact with other people. Either I honor my commitment and deal with my sexual or relational dissatisfaction OR I achieve satisfaction outside my relationship and I violate relational rules and deal with whatever consequences follow from that choice.

Basic Motivation for Infidelity: Selfishenss

After all of that, the question that motivated this post remains: why do some people make the choice to violate relational rules to meet their needs?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The particular explanations for any individual's choice to cheat are nuanced and specific to particular persons. Having said that, however, I would contend that regardless of the particulars of a person's reason to cheat, I think that the broad, overarching explanation for cheating is selfishness.

Cheating is the result of a person's refusal to relinquish the benefits of being in the primary relationship while receiving the benefits of another relationship. Often, the primary relationship provides us with a range of benefits we are unwilling to give up to pursue an extramarital fling, such as material or financial security or a partner to assist in the caring for children. Trying to maximize benefits while minimizing costs is a very normal method of decision making, but people who make the choice to cheat do so knowing that although they are receiving maximum benefits, their primary partners have enormous potential to receive negative consequences, and therein lies the selfishness.

I have also had people say that they choose to be unfaithful not to retain the benefits of the primary relationship (as there are very few), but rather they cheat to avoid the negative consequences of terminating the primary relationship. Such costly outcomes of relationship termination include a costly divorce, conflict over dividing shared possessions, potential loss of parts of a shared social network, and feelings of guilt for hurting the partner and destroying the relationship. In this case, the selfishness is rooted more in the refusal to accept the negative consequences of a more responsible and relationship-focused choice.

In either case, the unfaithful partner prioritizes his or her own positive outcomes over the rules of the relationship. Said differently: the unfaithful partner prioritizes his or her own happiness over being a respectful person who honors relational rules and commitment to a relationship. This, in my estimation, is the definition of selfishness.

Now, I realize that one might argue that selfishness and maximizing one's own positive outcomes is nothing more than a wise practice that ensures an individual's survival and high quality of life. That may well be true, but, as true as that statement may be, the fact is that happy, functioning relationships cannot survive when either partner values him or herself more than the relationship. If your aim is to be focused entirely on your self and your own positive outcomes, then close interpersonal connections are probably not for you. If, however, your aim is to participate meaningfully in the growth of close relationships with others, you must understand that a certain amount of sacrificing your own impulsive desires is necessary to make that happen.

The Take-Home Point and Some Parting Thoughts

So, at the end of the day, if you want to know why you were cheated on, the simple answer is: your partner is selfish and cares more about him or herself than about you or your relationship. Save yourself an uncomfortable interaction by accepting the reality of that statement.

If you are a person who has ever been unfaithful and you've convinced yourself that you cheated for some arguably justifiable reason, I'm sorry to have to tell you that the reality is that you were too selfish to honor the rules of your relationship. Yes, it is that simple.

I hope that this post has been illuminating for you. More than that, I hope you never have to refer to this post to understand an event in your own relationship.

Class dismissed.

Lesson 7, Part I: Is Flirting Cheating? - Defining Infidelity

When we discuss infidelity in my interpersonal communication class, there are usually three things that my students find most interesting:

1. What counts as cheating,
2. Why people cheat, and
3. Whether a relationship can survive the commission of an infidelity.

I've already talked about whether a relationship can survive an infidelity in my post about Trust, so if you're dealing with this issue, revisit that post. The other two questions are equally important, and I'd like to handle them in separate posts. So, the purpose of this Part I post on infidelity is to answer the question: what is infidelity?

Clearly defining infidelity is important because it allows us to accurately evaluate our own and our partners' behavior to determine whether or not an infidelity has been committed. Often, my students want my permission to be hurt or upset with a partner either for cheating or for unjustly accusing them of cheating. As much as my students want a clear and decisive answer to the question, "is it cheating if _______________?", I can never provide one.

This is because there isn't an exhaustive or universally agreed-upon list of what constitutes infidelity. Whether an act is considered unfaithful depends entirely on what behaviors a couple defines as cheating in their relationship. This variation in what people consider cheating is why some couples believe that flirting with the hottie at the cafe for a discount on coffee is cheating, while other couples have elaborate rules surrounding the management of an open relationship in which the act of having sex with another person is not, unto itself, an act of infidelity.

Though we can't identify a list of behaviors that are always considered unfaithful, understanding the definition of infidelity can provide us with some insight. So, infidelity can best be defined as the violation of one or more rules regarding exclusivity in the relationship. It's fairly common for couples of formally or explicitly declare that they are in an exclusive relationship, but far less frequently do couples explicate what resources they agree to get only from each other and no one else (which, after all, is the definition of "exclusive"). Generally, the declaration of exclusivity means that partners will not engage in sexual contact with people other than each other, but is often the case that a range of other behaviors may also be considered violations of exclusivity.

One of the difficulties of determining whether an act is unfaithful according to the rules of a relationship is that we often fail to discuss the rules until someone breaks a rule that they didn't know existed. Sometimes, our partners will engage in an arguably inappropriate interaction with someone we might consider a rival to our relationship, and we get upset. Our partners may not have known they were doing anything wrong. In some cases, even we didn't realize the behavior was problematic until it upset us. In highly functioning relationships, such a scenario will provide an opportunity for partners to talk to each other to clarify what behaviors are consistent with an agreement to be exclusive, and what behaviors are not. When couples respect each other, they both agree to honor the new boundary and the troublesome incident never has to repeat itself.

In couples that are less functional, however, a violation of implicit rules of exclusivity are acknowledged with some form of negative communication such as being in a bad mood or criticizing the partner, but no discussion about why the behavior was problematic. The perpetrating partner knows that his or her mate is upset, but may not realize why. This creates negativity in the relationship, but it doesn't clarify what behavior resulted in the relational distress. Because the perpetrating partner may not realize what he or she did wrong, there is a high probability that the behavior will be repeated. The repetition of the troublesome act results in an increase of hurt, anger, and resentment for the other partner. Ongoing negativity and harboring of resentment is one of the most efficient ways to affect a rapid decline in relational quality. Talking, then, about what is or isn't cheating becomes important to the maintenance of trust, and thus, satisfaction in the relationship.

So, if you're confronted with a situation in your relationship in which your partner has committed what you perceive to be unfaithful behavior, don't let it poison your relationship by refusing to openly discuss it. Yes, this can be uncomfortable. Yes, it may be construed as accusatory which may initially exacerbate the problem. But, if you are calm, reasonable, clear in communicating your thoughts, and willing to listen to your partner, you can create an opportunity for a fruitful and potentially relationship-saving conversation.

Of course, clarification of boundaries doesn't necessarily prevent unfaithful behavior, but that's a post for a different day.

Class dismissed.