When you find out that your partner has taken a side step in the relationship, the ground shakes under your feet and everything that is usual and safe crumbles into ashes. It's like a strong thump in the chest that takes your breath away. The blood hisses loudly in the ears, the spine is numbed by prickly, cold fear. Adrenaline rushes into the body and the fingers become numb. In an instant, all the good that has been built up to this day is erased. Only one thought pulsates in the mind - why. why me For what? And what to do with it now? After this, how can you wake up in the morning, go to the kitchen, turn on the kettle? Continue to live, work, deal with everyday issues, do laundry, buy milk and bread, check the mail? What if everything that kept you afloat until this moment and seemed unshakably stable suddenly turns into a caustic smoke that gnaws at the eyes and destroys all feelings.

Every couple defines what constitutes infidelity between them. For someone, it's sexual infidelity - "it doesn't matter who you communicate with, it matters who you sleep with." Someone considers infidelity to be an emotional closeness with an outsider. And sometimes it is even more painful and difficult to accept, because it allows you to understand that something very important and essential in the everyday grayness of the relationship has disappeared and one of the couple has gone to look for happiness outside the boundaries of the relationship.

It is painful to learn that the other has met somewhere else a person with whom he is ready to invest in a relationship. But in your relationship - no. It hurts when it suddenly turns out that you are not irreplaceable. That you are not the last page in your beloved's love book.

It is even more painful if the side step has happened because the other person has not found another love , but because of an extra drink in a bar. “I was drunk, it didn't mean anything.” The thought pops up in my head - I could be betrayed by some stupid accident, just like getting on the wrong bus by mistake. What kind of new love is there? It is enough to simply drink too much. To put on the card and put up for sale not only everything that was between us, but also the future, with which it is now not clear what will happen. Then anger and hatred are added to the pain of betrayal - "How could you draw a bold line over everything with a connection whose name you can't even remember? Everything that has been between us is just so worthless to you?"

There is such a concept - "existential novel". People introduce themselves to someone from the outside to feel alive. Because everyday, with tasks, bills, constant running, it is very easy to forget who you are, and remember only when they come to your bed to say goodbye.

"Who just missed here?" – "It was half a year. They often fly by here."

And suddenly someone appears in life who sees you as a person, not a function or a role. Who looks at you with admiration. Who asks not: "Did you pay the internet bill? Will you buy milk?", but: "How are you feeling?"

It's a very sad discovery when you realize - it's hard to remember the last time your loved one hugged you tenderly. Talked about you in front of others with pride. And then quietly whispered in her ear: "Everybody's wife is like a wife, but you seem to have been created especially for me - better than all of them."

Sometimes a side step is the only thing a person does in a relationship for himself, being tied up to his ears in caring for someone. He suddenly realizes that this passion , mystery and other person's interest is the little speck in his current life that is only for him. Where he is in the spotlight, not on the periphery. And this coming feeling allows him to return to the long-forgotten state of freedom, lightness, spontaneity and carelessness. Where sex is not stamped in the passport as a marital obligation, but a completely voluntary desire – passionate, natural and open to experimentation. Lively, debt- and obligation-free pleasure without brakes.

Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perele writes in her book "State of Affairs": "Becoming a victim of a side step makes people feel worthless. However, if a person feels worthless for years, it often makes him decide to side step himself."

When young children yearn for constant care and their father sits with his friends at a sports bar, an illegitimate crush can seem tonic. When marriage has turned into a farm management company and all conversations are reduced to and around logistics - poetry and novels begin to seem like a breath of fresh air over the exhausting prose of life. When the other person disappears into their garage every night, grabbing a six-pack of beer, there's plenty of time to hit the internet and find a better guy. When you're tired of the constant bickering at home, a colleague who likes your sense of humor can remind you that you weren't always such a hyena.

The list of resentments, micro-aggressions and excuses that cause the coal's desire to find solace in another place can be continued for a long time. The monotony of marriage often prompts one to seek salvation, and this is especially characteristic of those marriages in which physical intimacy has disappeared. When you haven't felt sensual touches for years, you become more receptive to the kindness and attention of people you meet by chance.

The side step is directly related to the violation of physical intimacy and therefore goes closely hand in hand with a sad theme in relationships - the waning libido. This is usually the case: either one of the couple does not want intimacy and the other's marriage turns into forced celibacy, or they lose their physical attraction directly to their spouse, although they still love, appreciate and respect them. We don't consider situations where you don't love, appreciate and respect each other and therefore don't want to touch each other. Unfortunately, nothing can be changed there.

Such a change is difficult to accept, because there is an opinion in the mind: where there is love and respect, sex is also fantastic. But it happens in life that a close and calm relationship excludes the passion of melodrama. Passion and erotic pleasure feed on egoism, spontaneity, courage. It requires a kind of invasion of the other person's boundaries, sharing one's desires and fantasies, which are often provocative and sometimes forbidden. And now imagine a long, warm, gentle marriage, where there are two children and a routine written by the hour. Respect for the other and concern for his feelings - just not to offend, not to hurt - gradually turns sexual relations into ones that are safe and predictable.

Experiments – it's a challenge, it's a rebellion, it's a meeting with the other person's unusual side, with his sexual shadow part. Libido begins to fade precisely because of the fear of putting the precious heart connection on the line. If the other person, who is gentle, careful, careful, delicate in intimate intimacy, hears about your fantasies, which are from the series: chains, planks, swings on the ceiling and dominance - they will simply not understand, get scared and think that something is wrong with you. He didn't sign up to something like that when you signed off on the marriage.

It turns out that volatile libido is the price of a close, stable relationship. If this is not your case, it is normal. And if there is - also.

There is a trick that allows you to get a second breath in your sexual life in a stable long-term relationship - to try to look at your loved one with someone else's eyes. Or to notice that look in other people's eyes. Take every opportunity to see your spouse in their natural environment outside of the home. In the company of colleagues, at a corporate event, in the company of friends.

Nothing wakes you up from sexual hibernation like a stranger's gaze with interest directed at your spouse. It is not necessary that this interest is sexual. It can simply be another person's admiration for the way your spouse conducts a conversation in English, deftly manages to light a fire with his own hands, changes someone's tire or comforts a lost child. Or - how gracefully you present yourself, with what sense of style you dress. If you do not fall into jealousy or aggression at this moment, you can feel a pleasant surprise. The spouse you've long seen as a positive but boring common-sense is actually pretty cool. Both as a man or a woman, as a professional and as a person with many wonderful qualities that inspire respect and admiration in others. Someone is silently drooling over it because their own relationship doesn't have it.

Other times it happens that people go further - due to the confusion that allows the libido to wake up, they decide to take a side step. And then the hood really falls off the eyes of the other one. To be fair, they are often covered by hatred and anger afterwards. So it's a bad strategy to bring passion back into a relationship. It's too expensive a price.

Everyone suffers in a love triangle - both the one being deceived, the one being deceived, and the one being deceived. So here it is best to refrain from looking for culprits and crowning the main martyr. What is really important is the courage to take responsibility if you took a side step. And the courage to face the pain of betraying you.

A side step is always a point of no return. Reference to the beginning of a new path, the direction of which you decide yourself. The choice to forgive or end a relationship is difficult. And no one has the right to condemn or challenge it. It cannot be placed in the hands of a psychologist (responsibility for one's own decision), the church, parents or friends. Because none of them have to live with the consequences. They will shake their heads, feel sorry and move on with their lives.

The most important thing is being honest with yourself and listening to your feelings, bypassing any frames and regulations. Love stories are different, just like every side story is different. Not with the plot, but with what everyone has to experience, what they have to go through, what they have to learn about themselves and what price they have to pay for this knowledge. Someone decides that a side step in his life is the end of everything. So he packs up and leaves. Someone else realizes that he doesn't have the strength to go on by himself; he doesn't remember, he doesn't know what it's like to be alone. And therefore decides to forgive and stay. Or stay, but do not forgive. Whether to stay, and further, as will happen. The main thing now is to get out of this pit of self-pity and hatred.

Important things to remember when facing a sidestep:

1. Don't take a sidestep as proof that you're useless in a relationship. As a humiliation and a testimony that you can be treated like that. That you deserve nothing better.
2. In such a situation, you often start thinking and it is imposed by the outside world - "If the other person went to the left, it is your fault. You should have tried harder, taken care of yourself or put on the obscene sister's outfit more often." This is not so. The responsibility for a sidestep rests entirely on WHO did it. It's his action, you weren't there and you weren't asked. You may also have put a finger to turn the relationship into something unbearable, but the responsibility for a sidestep, as an act of free will - when I know what I'm doing - is always on the side of the one who did it. Sidestepping by the other person is not about you. It's about who made the decision to do it.
3. You should not allow loved ones to shower your partner with soap in an effort to calm and support you. While the anger is bubbling up in your mouth, you will take these insults with a cheer, but after the transition to grieving and mourning the loss, it will be very painful to hear. When the first wave of hatred and anger has passed and the good things that have been experienced together will come back to mind, you will want to take his side and look for excuses for him, you will try to prove that he is not as bad as they say about him. It is a very natural inner call to protect the one we love. During the mourning period, there is a lot of sadness for the lost and also love. As a result, everything can turn so that you fall into the guilt trap described in the previous point. You will start to believe that you are to blame for the side step and the cycle of suffering will end.
4. If you took a side step - you have to decide what you will do and whether you will do anything at all. It is every person's decision - what to do and what consequences to live with. Everything that happens in our relationships is a story of consequences and our willingness or unwillingness to accept them. There is no magic hand gesture after which everything will be as it was and will be as you want. Taking a side step, one crosses a certain point from which there is no way back . This experience can no longer be cancelled. And then you have to focus on the next step. To tell or to keep silent? To keep in touch or not to keep in touch? There will be consequences in either case. At least three people are involved in the situation. Even if one of them doesn't know it yet. Consequences are not necessarily related to the events that follow the sidestep. Divorce, division of house, property and children. It may or may not happen. However, the fact that you will have to deal with new feelings will definitely happen. They will largely determine what you ultimately decide to do. You have to listen to yourself. Do not make decisions in the midst of strong emotions - feelings of guilt, shame or euphoria. You should give yourself several days to think about what happened. Assess the strengths you have to cope with one or the other scenario.

If you took a side step - so you wanted it. On the other hand, wants and needs are not something that can be easily dismissed and pretended not to exist. They will make themselves known in any case - through dissatisfaction in the relationship, through the feeling of inner emptiness and hunger for what is missing in your couple. Observe and notice what is happening in your union. What you feel and what you stopped feeling. Don't be afraid. The pain will subside like a storm at sea. No matter how the crisis in the relationship ends, it will give the beginning of something new. After several years, both the one who took a side step, the one who betrayed, and the one with whom he betrayed will turn back and understand who was given this experience. Why was it necessary?

It might seem like I'm trying to explain and justify the sidestep, but that's not the case at all. It is understandable that there are various reasons why this happens and things we turn a blind eye to in relationships.

People really like to find the culprits. As if it logically follows in the mind: find the culprit and punish. In the past, I myself was categorical: whoever cheats is guilty and should be punished, while the one who cheated is the victim and should be spared. As if everything is right. But that's not all. And not quite right. I am no longer looking for the perpetrators of the fraud, since both have put their brick in the construction called "side step". Sometimes the aggrieved party lays such a strong foundation with his whims, claims, sexual violence (by denying it, for example) and moral blackmail that it is quite simple for the other person to just add an attic and the side-step building is ready and can be put into operation.

In the case of fraud, there are many people who have provoked it (the fraudster himself, the victim, the parents and friends of the victim), but there is a participant with the main role in this event - the person who takes responsibility for the fraud. The person responsible is the one who has cheated. Everything is simple. If the husband cheated, the responsibility in the specific case lies only with the husband - the one who decided that sleeping with another woman is a better option than talking to his wife or a psychologist and thus solving the smoldering problem in the relationship. If the wife cheated, then the responsibility lies with the wife - the woman who decided that spending money on a psychologist is economically unprofitable and there are much more benefits from sleeping with a colleague on a business trip.

A side step is neither a good nor a bad step. However, it must be understood that it will never be the way it was before.

What has happened is not the end of the world. It is an experience and a new introduction. For you and your spouse. Any decision you make has the right to live. Absolutely everyone involved, including children, will survive it and gain their own experience, which will become part of their life story. If we think about everyone else, there will be no chance to live our own life.

It's amazing, but millions of sidestep stories, drowning in the pain of betrayal, then turn into giant gratitude that it happened. Because the moment their lives rocked, a new path opened up beneath their feet, leading them to places they never thought they would go.

Betrayal grew into a new family, a new future - moreover, much more beautiful than the one that disintegrated everywhere. I can't promise that it will be exactly like that. But you have to keep believing in the best scenario for yourself.

Author of the article: relationship mentor Zane Ozoliņa