For some, secrecy is a doorway. It takes them from the familiar, shared realities with others into a hidden world. . .a world that is inherently different, a world where their self-experience is altered, and therefore, a world where they are somehow freer to be, feel and act differently. A key aspect of infidelity recovery is understanding how living in secrecy alters the internal state of the person engaging in the affair.
During the period when the infidelity is kept hidden, the secret-holder’s inner world is divided. They no longer exist within an integrated self-experience. The state of mind of someone engaged in secretive acting out is miles apart from how that person thinks, feels and behaves while occupying their “ordinary” (non-secretive) life. And it is the ability to keep these internal (as well as external) worlds separate that allows cheating to continue.
To understand the impact of secrecy on the wayward partner’s state of mind, it helps to understand how the mind functions when it is not organized around deception. In everyday life, we often psychologically move between different states of mind while maintaining a basic sense of self-continuity and coherence. Even as feelings, roles, and contexts change, there is an underlying experience of being the same person across multi-faceted situations.
It is this psychological coherence of self that secrecy—and particularly the secrecy of infidelity—erodes, leading to a self that is increasingly compartmentalized and divided.
Different States of Mind, One Coherent Self
When someone is being unfaithful, they are straddling opposing realities: the known non-secretive world and the emotionally charged, transgressive world of infidelity. These worlds activate different versions (or parts) of the same person. In psychoanalysis these subjective ways of being are called self-states.
You may have noticed that you feel and act differently depending on who you are with and the particular context of the moment. The self is not a fixed or static phenomenon—it can be quite fluid. At any given moment, depending on context, the person you are engaged with and/or the emotions being stirred, your subjective experience is going to be quite different than during other moments and circumstances. A self-state is the subjective experience you are having in a given moment (and this includes how you think, feel, behave, and it may include the ways in which you relate to others).
For instance, you might feel like a more confident version of yourself at work, a more vulnerable version of yourself with your spouse or partner, or a more defended version of yourself when you feel criticized or unseen. Each of these is a different self-state.
These self-states make up the complex composite of who you are; they are not masks or “fake” versions of you. Your mind’s capacity to experience differing self-states (with each having unique ways of being/thinking/feeling) are important ways your mind organizes experience in order to adapt, cope and protect yourself.
Some self-states might feel familiar and stable, while others that emerge under high stress or emotionally charged and destabilizing circumstances (e.g., the transgressive secrecy of infidelity) can bring about self-states that are highly uncharacteristic and extreme. We will explore these more fragmented and extreme alterations of the self below.
It is normal to have multiple self-states. Problems arise, however, when certain self-states become walled off, hidden, or dissociated from the rest of the self. Infidelity requires this kind of psychological compartmentalization—the splitting off of parts of yourself that come alive through transgression and deception.
Secrecy, Infidelity, and the Breakdown of Self-Coherence
In the context of infidelity, the self-states organized around deception, excitement, and transgression must remain separate from the self-states organized around attachment, responsibility, and commitment. Mental compartmentalization (a form of dissociation) is often central to keeping the secretive life separate from the marital/relationship life.
But there is a psychological/emotional in-between space between these two separate worlds that is important to understand for deeper infidelity healing to occur.
The idea that one’s mind can be divided or fragmented has a long history in psychology. Metaphors of internal rooms or spaces used to describe dissociation, parts-based experience, and internal subjectivity can help to make sense of these complex inner states. I will build on this metaphor to explore the shifts in consciousness that drive infidelity in someone with a trauma history.
Room one: The established life
Here is where you spend most of your time psychically. While there may exist slightly different versions of yourself in this room, these varied parts aren’t so drastically different that you become unrecognizable to yourself and others. This is the “known” you.
There is an arc to the life that exists in this room—it’s the familiar life you have built over the years. This room contains your primary relationship or marriage, family, friends, professional identity, activities that bring you meaning, etc. You and your partner have a shared history that exists here, a history with memories, routines, obligations, goals and dreams. Others know this you.
For those with trauma histories, it can be a challenge at times to exist in this space. Because of childhood trauma and/or neglect, you may carry a painful residue from your past, such as toxic shame, self-limiting fears, or unshakeable loneliness. This residue may cast a shadow over your experience in this room. This doesn’t mean that you do not love aspects of your life here; there might be fulfilling experiences that you cherish, relationships that anchor you and bring meaning.
But the inner struggles that arise from childhood trauma may have led to self-adaptations that mute and numb you, a constricting of your fuller expansiveness. Even in the presence of success or love, even surrounded by people who care for you in this room, something may still feel off. There can be an elusiveness you cannot shake, as though you’re present, yet not fully inhabiting yourself.
Room two: The secret life (infidelity-secrecy consciousness)
This is the psychological room someone enters when they are actively engaged in cheating. This space is cloaked in secrecy and its structure is built on transgression.
Elements of the room infidelity-secrecy inhabits:
Anxiety and a sense of danger are prominent;
Thoughts of loved ones are kept at bay;
Time may feel altered or unreal;
There is a disconnect between action and consequence;
The usual moral/ethical code is fully disengaged;
The normally self-regulating signal of guilt is silenced;
The constraints of life and the emotional burdens carried from trauma are momentarily suspended.
It’s as if the complexity of life vanishes as one’s altered identity becomes simplified and narrowed. Self-experience is now centered around chasing relief, desperately seeking ways to finally feel alive. A different subjectivity momentarily opens up—while the established, familiar life room organizes the self around responsibility, the secretive room organizes the self around intensity.
While one might feel less constrained and accountable in the secretive room, these highly stimulating self-states are transient and built of deceit. And for the survivor of childhood trauma, the experiences stimulated by this type of secretive acting-out are often connected with the unresolved traumas from their past.
The hallway: The liminal space between these rooms
When it comes to secretive acting out, there is another important psychological space that exists that hasn’t received much attention—the space in-between the familiar/known world and the secretive/transgressive world.
Continuing with the house metaphor, this space can be seen as the hallway connecting these two rooms. This in-between or liminal space is essential to understanding what happens to some people when they create and maintain a secretive world.
As one enters this liminal psychological hallway, something begins to loosen. The familiar self-states (how you know yourself to be, feel, and respond) start to lose their grip. You begin to step out of the roles you inhabit, and your subjective reality shifts. You are no longer fully anchored in who you have been, but you have not yet entered the self-states that take shape within the infidelity–secrecy room.
In healthy liminal spaces (for instance, shifts that occur when becoming mindful of your breath; when engaging in self-compassion meditation), creative possibilities and expansive ways of being can open up—a transformative self-experience. However, in the liminal hallways of infidelity, one can unwittingly fall backwards into old traumatic patterns, a repetition of childhood dynamics involving secrecy, danger, shame, self-degradation. What feels enlivening during the secretive acting-out can, for some, be a dissociative state associated with earlier attachment wounds/patterns.
Liminal spaces are psychologically powerful because when identity loosens, the mind can become more open but also more vulnerable. For some, that vulnerability can lead to traumatic reenactments and a lapse in moral judgment. Compartmentalization that was used to help you manage the original traumas of the past now become deployed in the service of the acting out. It’s as if the younger, wounded parts are attempting to revisit/recreate the scenes of the past in order to restructure, control and heal these emotional injuries. But unfortunately, these repetitions are often re-traumatizing since dissociative defensives seriously compromise self-reflection and self-understanding.
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Survivors of developmental trauma often grew up spending considerable time in these psychological hallways, holding the secrets of the abuse they’ve suffered (and the subsequent emotional burdens carried) that keep them disconnected from others, moving through life unseen, carrying intolerable truths in silence.
Healing from the devastation of infidelity is multifaceted. Infidelity alters the self through shifts that occur in a liminal hallway of consciousness. Shame and guilt are often held there, compartmentalized in order to preserve access to the familiar relational world. Maintaining this separation requires enormous psychological effort. And when one re-enters the known room, an emotional residue of shame and guilt follows (often when one is not even aware of it).
This residue shapes how one relates to self and others. The capacity to receive love is diminished. Fragmentation interferes with emotional presence, and compartmentalization can only contain so much. During infidelity, the wayward partner exists in this psychological in-between state, and it inevitably influences how they show up.
In infidelity recovery, identifying these shifts is essential. For many, these shifts are old adaptations learned in the context of early trauma—ways of altering oneself to survive unbearable experiences. When these states emerge in adulthood without awareness, reenactments become more likely. Healing requires not only accountability for the affair, but integration of the self-states that made the betrayal possible.
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Rich Nicastro, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience supporting individuals and couples as they navigate betrayal trauma and other emotional challenges. He offers teletherapy to clients throughout the United States. To work with Dr. Nicastro and join his waiting list, please email him at Rich@RichardNicastro.com.
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Article References
Bromberg, P. M. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Bromberg, P. M. (2011). The shadow of the tsunami: And the growth of the relational mind. New York, NY: Routledge.
Thomassen, B. (2014). Liminality and the modern: Living through the in-between. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
