Internal Affairs

Hey all, Ryan here.

I was thinking back to the days of being young and single in the SAFD. I’ll admit that my pickup game was weak as hell. It always felt too desperate to lead with “oh I’m a firefighter” but it was working for my friends. So the first time I decided to use that line, I not only got shot down...but also afraid to ever use it again. And why do you ask? The young lady I was speaking to had previous experience with men in uniforms and apparently it was not good. She asked me, “you know what they say?” I was fully expecting a playful perhaps flirty line but instead she hit me with “firefighters cheat, police officers beat.”

Ouch. I laughed awkwardly, took the L, and moved along. Those are some strong accusations from a person who wanted to paint my all brethren with a wide brush. A few bad apples do not define a large group. Her words stuck with me. For the record, our sisters, and brothers in SAPD are not only highly professional, but they are also good people who would shun the thought of laying hands on a partner. Regardless, it got me thinking.

The last few years I have been able to zero in on mental health and all the related topics. One thing I’ve learned is that our childhood plays a significant role in who we are as adults. So now I can dive down a rabbit hole and zero in on what possibly could make a person affair prone. I’m not proud to admit my own infidelity, but it happened, so this started as a journey of self-discovery.

I stumbled across a gentleman from Austin named Richard Nicastro, a clinical psychologist with over 25 years specializing in infidelity counseling. A lot of the info I will be referring to is from his work, for which I will provide a link.

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The betrayed partner wants answers and possibly so does the betrayer. Why does someone cheat when they are in an ideal relationship? Sometimes knowing the answer to this goes a long way in the healing process. Labeling it as a bad mistake and turning the page is probably not going to solve the “why?” part of it. If working through this, the “why” needs to be figured out so it does not happen again. If you can name it, you can tame it.

There could be a range of reasons for an affair...it may be several reasons or just one. There’s not a “catch-all,” but according to Nicastro, there is one that frequently is part of the equation. This is not intended to be an excuse, but to get to the root of the issue and give the best opportunity to stop this behavior.

When someone is a victim of child abuse, whether it’s physical, sexual, or psychological, it can cause considerable damage that impacts a child as they develop into adulthood. Oftentimes, the result is to forget memories of the event by avoidance or dissociation as a means of self-preservation. When a heavy event remains unprocessed on into your adult life, there’s the possibility of burying certain emotions along with the memory.

If childhood trauma can have a profound, negative impact on how one copes and relates to themselves and others, it seems likely that some individuals with traumatic attachment wounds may have a heightened vulnerability to secretive acting-out.

-Richard Nicastro, PhD

Understanding the role of childhood trauma is a good place to start unpacking why someone may have been unfaithful. As an adult, recalling the memory may not make much sense because the memories are from the age the trauma happened, not a fully developed adult brain. These fragmented memories can conjure the same emotions as the original trauma. When certain emotions are locked away with the trauma itself, they can both rear their heads at the same time which can be confusing as hell when they surface. This is when acting-out behavior can begin.

Acting out can take many forms but a few examples are heavy alcohol or drug use, sexually acting out, or even creating a secret life. Acting out is a way to protect yourself by distracting you from bad memories or to numb your feelings. Creating a secret life may have innocently begun as a way to keep those bad memories muted. And like I said earlier, the problem is that emotions can be muted with the same button as memories, so then it takes a higher degree of stimulus to feel that emotion. That’s something a lot of firefighters are familiar with. When putting yourself in dangerous situations is in your job description, it can make a double-loop rollercoaster feel like the Teacups at Disney World. If you don’t think this shapes the way you relate to yourself and others, you’re wrong. You also get a strong idea of how to protect yourself, which can mean keeping parts of you at a distance from some of the people you love and trust the most. You’re not really keeping secrets because this can all be done subconsciously, but there is a drive to seek out high-risk actions that can feed the secrecy deep in your brain. It may then get repeated throughout your life unless the childhood traumas that occurred in secrecy are understood and emotionally worked through.

Trauma-based secrecy may get repeated throughout your life unless the childhood traumas that occurred in secrecy are understood and emotionally worked through.

-Nicastro

An affair may mistakenly feel like the best way to protect yourself. You do this because as a child, at some point things went terribly wrong and now that feeling is embedded. Your baseline operates by thinking that something will ALWAYS go wrong, so you unknowingly want to beat it to the punch. You betray instead of waiting to be betrayed. Unfortunately, you’ve already sealed your own fate by causing pain to someone else who was unrelated to your original trauma.

Childhood trauma is not the only reason affairs happen, but it’s a possibility that it can contribute. Of course, there are other reasons which can be too personal to list. And just because you did have childhood trauma, you’re not preprogrammed to cheat. Every situation is different; this is only intended to help us understand why affairs may happen and how to address what may be causing them.

This is uncomfortable, but also a great example of how compartmentalizing trauma doesn’t always work. It will usually resurface at some point and if unchecked, the timing can impact many people. When you choose to address these issues on your terms at your time, you can better control the outcome. Bonus points if you do it under the guidance of a therapist. Oh, and just in case you didn’t know, we have a therapist here at the Wellness Center. Never hesitate to reach out if you want to be heard.

Childhood trauma and affairs