Betrayal involving a partner’s friend as the lover is particularly damaging to relationships. It often leads to:
1. Severe trust issues for the betrayed partner
2. Breakdown of social circles and support systems
3. Heightened emotional trauma due to dual betrayal
4. Difficulty in reconciliation efforts
5. Increased likelihood of relationship dissolution
To address this situation:
1. Cease all contact with the friend/lover immediately
2. Be completely honest about the affair’s details
3. Seek individual and couples therapy
4. Allow the betrayed partner time and space to process
5. Rebuild trust through consistent actions and transparency
6. Reevaluate and establish clear boundaries with friends
7. Address underlying relationship issues that may have contributed
8. Consider the impact on mutual friends and social circles
9. Be prepared for a lengthy healing process
10. Understand that reconciliation may not be possible
If choosing to end the relationship:
1. Communicate clearly and respectfully
2. Seek legal advice if necessary
3. Establish boundaries for future interactions
4. Focus on personal healing and growth
Remember, healing from such betrayal is complex and requires commitment from all parties involved.
Betrayal is an act of infidelity, of breaking a commitment or a promise made, and in the monogamous society in which we live it is almost always associated with the plan relational and affective. One betrays a friend or girlfriend, a boyfriend, a husband. There can be many reasons that lead to betrayal, and it is almost always a traumatic event, for those who suffer it, but also for those who experience it. It is a warning sign, too, that something in the “official” relationship is not going (unless, of course, there is agreement to live an open, polygamous relationship).
All forms of cheating
The forms that betrayal can take are also diverse. There is the occasional betrayal, of the time of a crush; that linked to a dimension purely physical, consumed perhaps out of boredom and habit within the walls of the home; or there is the prolonged betrayal, established, in which a real parallel life is created, of lovers and bedfellows. Or again, not taken for granted, betrayal with feelings, when one seriously falls in love with the lover in question and the relationship goes far beyond incognito sexual encounters.
The causes
According to surveys by Dating-ExtraConijugals.com, a site dedicated to those who are looking for a story outside the couple to experience new emotions, the cause of cheating is, in most cases, the boredom (45%), followed by poor attention from the partner (32%) and dissatisfaction in sex life (21%). In short, an escape from routine that sometimes ends quickly, sometimes turns into a serious relationship, but other times serves as a pause to “heal” the official relationship, to return to it with more momentum and motivation than before. Not all evil comes to harm.
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With the stranger
In most cases (for 56% of men and 62% of women) cheating is consummated at the place of work, before the gym, parties or disco. A European survey commissioned by the Gleeden to the IFOP Institute of Public Opinion on 5,000 European women (including 1,000 Italians) say that the 33% of married women cheat with a stranger. How. 27% admit to having had an extramarital fling with someone they met in a bar, at a concert or nightclub (18%), or in a public place such as on a train, on the bus, or at the gym (9%). Six percent have relied on dating apps.
Cheating with a friend
Be careful, however, because 42% of female cheating occurs with someone who one already knows, and 9% of the encounters arise on the occasions of most innocent socialization: weddings, engagement parties, dinners and evenings with friends or, even, during family celebrations (perhaps with the husband present). “Today’s infidels prefer to navigate known waters,” reads Gleeden.
Sex revival
The famous extramarital dating site AshleyMadison.com has shown that six out of ten Italians succumb to the sex revival, indulging in a love interlude with the former. This is a growing trend, considering also the fact that it has become so easy to contact one’s exes. According to the survey, “for almost four out of ten Italians, it was enough to type the name of the ex on Facebook; another 27% found the ex in a reunion with school or university friends, while 22% of the encounters took place with the complicity of a mutual friend. Only 12 percent put more effort into it, doing Google searches and using word-of-mouth to get information about the long-lost ex.”
If the friend is of him
There is one situation that is even more difficult among those imaginable: when she cheats on him with a friend (of his). It happens, all right, in those Dangerous and unsuspected triangles whereby in addition to the harm there is the mockery and the hurt for the betrayed person is double, on the part of the partner and the friend (also applies to the man who cheats on his partner with a friend of hers of course). This betrayal, considered very unethical, is – rationally – difficult to justify and forgive, although in practice nothing changes from that famous “coming short of a promise.”
Motivations
A fling with his friend can have several readings. By commutative property we can think that if my he, for whom there was interest anyway, gets along with his friend; I will also have passions and situations to share, first in friendship and then who knows, with this person. There are commonalities in this dangerous triangulation. But not only that: betrayal with his friend defies the inaccessible, the ban within the ban, to break through a really dangerous and off limits situation. You cross the line, and that’s what you often look for.
Revenge
The anger is one of the strongest emotions in these betrayals, not only for those who suffer it. Do you remember the movie She Devil? The protagonist decides to take revenge with her ex-husband by going to destroy, point by point, her axes of strength: home, work, family. Here, there are those who cheat with their partner’s friend to attack him/her of one of the most cherished things, thefriendship.
Silence
Betrayal with a friend or acquaintance is one of the most difficult both to discover and to admit, precisely because the implication is deep, total. That is why it is almost always not revealed, whether male or female, unless it really becomes something serious. One cannot make generalizations, give advice without knowing the specific case, because the causes, efforts, relationships and energies involved would have to be analyzed, perhaps involving a therapist, first as an individual and then as a couple. Clearly love cannot be commanded and it is impossible to row against very strong feelings. But is it really love? In any case, such important events are to be recognized and read for what they are, trying to make valuable lessons from them.
