Trust is the foundational “glue” of human society, essential for our psychological, biological, and social survival.

Historically, humans lived in small groups where relying on others for hunting, gathering, and protection was a strict matter of survival. In more modern times, we build trusting relationships with other nations to exchange food and other vital resources and have understandings that they won’t attack us. These trusting relationships are vital to our survival.

In more intimate relationships, social interaction and trust-building trigger the release of oxytocin in our brains, a hormone that lowers stress, reduces fear, and increases feelings of bonding and safety. On Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, food and safety are foundational and without which we cannot function.

Trust is the base layer of all human relationships. Without trust, there can be no value exchange, no community, no intimacy. So what happens when trust is broken?

The consequences of a breach of trust with, for example, another nation are fairly obvious. They can include war, displacement, murder. Decimation of culture, law, order and human rights. It is often catastrophic and can lead to the demise of entire populations.

Knowing how vital trust is to our physical, mental and emotional survival, I’m therefore appalled at how casually breach of trust in intimate relationships like a marriage or monogamous partnership is viewed. It’s my personal opinion that breach of trust in relationships, such as an affair, is abuse. The definition of abuse is any form of physical, emotional or sexual mistreatment or lack of care that leads to injury or harm.

When a person has sexual relations with a person outside of their relationship, even if it’s just kissing another person, they can open up their partner to physical injury such as oral herpes, STIs like HIV which can be life threatening and STIs like chlamydia which can go undetected for years and can render women infertile. The modern tacit acceptance of cheating is the condoning of physical abuse.

For women of child bearing age, affairs outside of their partnership can lead to pregnancy. The consequences of uncertain paternity can affect a human being for the rest of their lives, for example the propensity towards inherited diseases and even what blood type they are. On a fundamental level, we humans need to know where we come from. We want to know things like whose eyes or temperament we’ve inherited. The harm in not having access to this information is seen in many adopted people, who can have their emotional and mental health seriously affected by a lack of knowledge about their genetic makeup.

Infidelity doesn’t have to be physical, however. It can be emotional intimacy with a person to whom we’re also sexually attracted. If we to speak to, or act with, this person in ways we feel the need to keep secret from our partner it’s cheating.

To be cheated on means we lose our autonomy. We live a life based on lies and deception and make decisions based on these falsehoods. If we knew the truth we would make other choices. Our cheating partner is making choices and decisions for us without our knowledge or consent, wielding power, influence, dominance and control over us.

Infidelity is never a “mistake”. No matter how drunk the cheater was, if their friends told them to jump off a cliff they wouldn’t because they know they’d either die or cause themselves serious physical injury, and if they were so high or drunk that they would jump off a cliff there’s no way they would be able to perform, or consent, to sex. We are always in control of our actions when we cheat, however much the cheater wants to lie to themselves and others that they are not.

Texting a person requires desire and action. Arranging to meet up with someone requires desire and action. Kissing another person requires desire and action. Having sex with another person requires desire and action. When we cheat we keep these actions secret because we know they would cause untold emotional and psychological pain to our partner. We are deliberately choosing to harm someone we purport to love.

We don’t, of course, love our partner if we lie, deceive, cheat on them and break their trust. If we cause them to question their self worth or to wonder what’s wrong with them that they’re not ‘enough’. That’s abuse and entitlement, not love.

If we are unhappy in our relationship we have 3 options:

• Do nothing and remain unhappy
• Take steps to resolve the issue, eg by talking it through with our partner or having couples or individual therapy
• If the issue cannot be resolved, we separate
  
  There is no fourth option.

Because trust and the safety it provides is an innate need, breach of trust in an intimate relationship is devastating at a core level. At a Soul level.

Without trust in a relationship there can be no depth or intimacy. Trust and the vulnerability needed for emotional intimacy go hand in hand. Speak to 99% of people who have been cheated on and remain with the cheater and they admit that their relationship was never the same afterwards, and of the remaining 1% I’m very sceptical of those who say that their partner cheating strengthened their relationship. That’s not how human survival instinct works.

Once we’ve been bitten by a dog we’re always wary around that dog and it’s the same with people. The second he’s home late from work, or every time she goes out for the evening with her friends, we get that little nervous system niggle in the pit of our stomach warning us of danger. The worst part is that once bitten by a dog we’re not just wary of that dog, we’re wary of all dogs forever more. We’re instinctively wired to react to breaches of trust because it’s an inbuilt survival mechanism.

Having our trust broken by someone we love changes who we are on a fundamental level. It is abuse and like all abuse it inhibits Soul growth and the Soul growth of the abuser – we cannot grow as a spiritual being by trampling the spirits of others underfoot. Both societally, and individually, we need to view infidelity with the seriousness it deserves.