Should You Confess to Cheating, When to Tell & Why Aiden Said "I Wish I Didn't Know" — S3E12 with Idit Sharoni, Infidelity Recovery Therapist
About This Episode
In Season 3 episode twelve of And Just Like That… We Found Therapy, host Isabel MV is joined by licensed marriage and family therapist and infidelity recovery specialist Idit Sharoni to unpack Sex and the City's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It's the episode where Carrie finally tells Aidan she slept with Big — right before Charlotte's wedding, in a hallway, while he is holding a hand-carved love seat he built for the couple as a gift. Aidan says he wished he'd never known. Miranda lies on a speed date and meets someone who lied right back. Charlotte and Trey have a disastrous wedding eve attempt at sex. Samantha storms out of a bridesmaid fitting.
What We Cover
Should you confess to an affair — and is honesty always the best policy? The case for both sides
Why 60% of couples don't survive infidelity, and what the 40% who do have in common
The two types of people after betrayal: sufferers and explorers — and why only one leads somewhere good
How an affair shows up in a relationship even when the partner doesn't consciously know
When does intuition about a partner's affair show up — and why some people genuinely had no idea?
The best practices for confessing an affair: timing, privacy, what to expect and what not to do
Why asking for every detail after betrayal can actually delay healing — the puzzle analogy
Can someone love their partner and still cheat? Idit's answer from two thousand couples
Carrie saying "I love you" to Aidan on the stoop instead of confessing: what that moment really was
Starting a relationship on a lie — does it doom it from the start?
Charlotte and Trey's wedding eve bedroom disaster: performance anxiety or a sign of something bigger?
Whether Samantha and Charlotte's wildly different attitudes to sex can coexist in a close friendship
Idit's programme "It's Okay to Stay" — and why the name itself is part of the work
About Our Guest
Idit Sharoni is a licensed marriage and family therapist, founder of Relationship Experts and host of the Relationships Uncomplicated podcast. Her Infidelity Recovery Program, It's Okay to Stay, works with couples across the world navigating betrayal. Find her at iditsharoni.com or relationshipexperts.com — all links in the show notes.
Transcript
Welcome back, Boundary Babes. This week's episode is all about cheating, and whether honesty is actually always the best policy. I am joined by licensed marriage and family therapist Idit Sharoni.
She helped me impact so much, like how to decide whether or not you should tell your partner about an affair, the do's and don'ts of confessing, and what to expect in the aftermath. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'll see you on the other side.
I love y'all.
Bye.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of And Just Like That We Found Therapy. I am your host, Isabela Mve, and I am super excited to be joined today by Idit Sharoni.
She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, founder of Relationship Experts, and host of the podcast Relationships Uncomplicated.
Her work also specializes on infidelity recovery, so I am so excited to have her with me today to discuss season three, episode 12 of Sex and the City, Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Welcome, Idit.
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
The episode opens with Miranda looking for a date because she is dateless for Charlotte's wedding and it's a week away.
This is the episode right after Carrie and Big very dramatically end their affair with Natasha falling down the stairs, and Carrie still hasn't told Aiden because obviously, he hasn't found anything out by himself and we are at the rehearsal dinner,
and Carrie's voiceover is talking about the fact that she was a cheater and she was a liar, and she hadn't said anything to Aiden. So my first question to you is, what do you think about some cheaters that take their affairs to their graves?
Personally, I think most people are not going to like that.
It's very much against everything we believe that needs to be in relationships, against what people say, honesty is your best policy, all of that. So if I think about it myself, I probably feel it's not the right thing to do.
However, as someone who worked with hundreds, like probably around 2000 couples at this point, collectively in our practice, I have so much information from what other people think that are not me.
So I don't know that that is necessarily what we should lead with. I think that people that are already in the aftermath of that, like they've already found out many times will tell you, I wish I didn't know about this.
So before it happens to us, we want to know and we think you should tell if you did something you should tell, but then when you talk to people who were told, you will see a lot of people that will say, I wish I didn't know this, this is this
destroyed my life so badly. And I think Aiden even says it in the episode, right?
Yes, he does.
I didn't want to know this.
Yes, that is heartbreaking because I don't think you can win. And as much as I'd like to think, yes, of course, I wouldn't want to know because you always want to soothe whatever pain you have going on at that instant.
I never want to be the woman who doesn't know and everybody knows behind my back, or I don't feel like I know the truth of the relationship on my partner.
Yeah, that's true. There is no winning here. There is no one answer that works for everybody.
There's definitely, like there's a case for both. So, I've seen many times secrets being kept, which is not supposed to be the right thing, but actually keeping those secrets came from compassion towards the other person.
And I've seen the opposite where the truth was told in a way that was completely un-compassionate. So, I'm going to tell you and I'm going to break your heart, or I'm going to tell the kids.
So, there is no definitive of the truth will always be the right thing to do. You need to think, is this compassionate to the other person? Is this the right thing to do?
Is this... Am I doing this out of wanting to create a certain feeling in you, like revenge? And also, am I doing this to make myself feel better?
Which I think this is what Carrie ended up doing. She told him because she felt really bad.
Yeah.
But I love what you're saying, because I think the next scene is all the girls trying the bright dresses and Carrie's sharing it with her girlfriends, like whether or not she should tell Aiden, and she thinks that she should, which bridges onto what
the column will be for the week for her, which is when it comes to relationships, is honesty the best policy? Because I think it bridges to so many things, but especially when talking about relationships and having an affair, I think it's such a
slippery slope when you start making small decisions about keeping things from your partner and the rationale behind it. I know that there's a lot of men that maybe keep some of the financial bad news from their partners because they want to fix it
before they tell their wives and they don't want to worry them. If you know that the affair has meant nothing and you know that your partner probably wouldn't be able to get over it, also keep it from them.
So, my next question to you is, how big a deal do you think that honesty is in a healthy relationship?
It's a very big deal in my opinion, because I've seen what dishonesty does, and I've seen what secrets can do. So, it could be a good policy if you knew 100%, then that none of this will ever be found out. So, if you had that guarantee, then maybe.
And if you had the guarantee that whatever you're doing out there in secrecy does not impact who you are in this relationship, I think no one has those two guarantees.
Because if you are having an affair, you are showing up differently to your relationship. And I don't think I've met one couple where one was having an affair or any other type of betrayal and they were showing up exactly the same way.
Maybe their partner wouldn't notice because sometimes you are very surprised, but you are showing up differently.
I want to put a pin on that on your partner noticing, because I have thoughts on this. But I think the girls are having drinks the day before the wedding, and Charlotte is very giddy.
And I think they're all talking about love and Charlotte's next great. And Carrie goes to Aiden's studio after having drinks with the girls, and she is very nice to him. And Aiden is peak Aiden.
He is building this beautiful love seat for the couple as a wedding present. And he's explaining to Carrie what the love seat means, and it's wood from two different trees.
And because the trees together, even though different, they make the love seat stronger. And then there's like a little flaw that is not a flaw, it's just the way it's made. It's the best piece of the love seat.
And you can see that Carrie is having this internal battle in her head. And she clings onto that comment of like, so flaws can be good.
And she thinks about telling him in that moment, she's like, I could hear myself just blurting the words out and like being free of this secret, but I couldn't think about him not being able to love me.
And my question here to you is, do you think, especially from women, cause I think I struggle in my head to think about a man thinking about whether or not to tell because his wife might not find him lovable, and maybe I'm wrong.
But do you think that this is very common between women who don't want to own up to an affair? The fact that they think that they might not be the same in the eyes of their partner.
I don't know that this is something that I see. Actually, what I've seen with a lot of women is quite the opposite. And so when it's the woman that had the affair, women feel a lot more vindicated, you know?
They feel like, I've been with you for 15 years, for 10 years, I was begging for you to hear me, I was begging for more love, I was begging for more attention, blah, blah, blah.
And I've been doing this for such a long time until I couldn't do it anymore and I had an affair. So they feel like I almost have a good reason why I did this. And they stand behind that reason much more than men.
Sometimes men will do the same. But to speak to what she was thinking, I think that there's like a mixture there of I have this thing in my throat that I have to, like I can't breathe, I can't, I don't feel normal.
That I have to tell you, it's like a relief. Like I need to spit it out. Versus if I do that, would you still see me as a flawed human being?
And that is a huge question that I think many people can. So this was not a good example because it looks like when she told him he was done.
But what I see and I know a little bit about the percentage, probably somewhere like around percent of cases where people actually have that capacity to not vilify, to not see the person through only through their betrayal. And so they...
Did you say 40-4-0?
I think so. I didn't check it, but if I'm thinking about it, I think 60% of all couples that experience infidelity don't stay together. So I'm saying the other percent, like 40%...
Yes.
Maybe less than that because some of those who stay together still don't have that ability.
But those who stay together and are able to work on things and be happy are usually the ones that are able to acknowledge that their partner is flawed and still hold them in warm regard.
They don't make that action who the person is, so they don't let the betrayal define the person. So it's not you are a cheater and that's all you are to me. You are a good person that I love who cheated on me.
Yeah.
I'd love to build on that because after that, Carrie is smoking outside and they're talking about how they can't continue like that because Carrie is smoking outside because Aiden didn't like her smoking.
And she's saying like, oh, what can I say? I tried quitting. I cannot quit.
And like, that's it. I'm flawed. And Aiden is like, listen, you're not just a smoker.
It's okay. You're a million things above that. So we'll just work around it.
I'm also flawed. And she said, really? What's your flaw?
And he's like, I don't know. What do you tell me? And her voiceover says, your flaw is trusting me because I betrayed you.
So building on what you were saying, I know that many times it's also hard for the cheater to stay in the relationship because they get a constant reminder that they did something worthy of a bad person.
So, and that comes also with, I'm very curious to see how you've seen this play out because I see sometimes when a couple tries to stay together after a betrayal, the person who has been betrayed sometimes weaponizes the affair and will throw it out
like, oh really? You don't want to go and pick up the kids today? How about when you were running around town behind my back sleeping with that woman?
And then that is a constant reminder that that person was wrong, did something wrong, and it's very hard for you to have to face every day, be the bad person in a relationship. Do you think that this is what's happening here?
Do you think that that's common in a relationship where there's been a betrayal?
It can happen. It's not very common, but I've seen it happen. So think about a couple who found out about infidelity, and they decided, we're going to try to work on this, and they do the work.
And then they then come to a place where they have a few options. They could let this trauma continue to destroy their relationships. So they could become what's called the sufferers.
And this is not something that I invented. This is, this comes from, actually, from Sarah Perel, who is a marriage and family therapist as well. And she wrote a book about this.
And one of her chapters, she says, okay, so what happens after? And what happens after is you can become a sufferer.
Like you're stuck with this person, you're married to them, you're not leaving them, but you're also not letting go of the betrayal, of the sense of I was fucked. I was, you know, betrayed.
And that becomes the undercurrent of everything that happens in the relationship. You don't want to pick up the kid. What about that?
But you did have time to spend with your lover. So it's like this. Then you have another option.
I won't talk about all of them, but the one that I like is, you know, to be like, I think she calls it an explorer. And the explorers are the ones that are actually able to grow from the trauma and to create something new.
And not to say, oh, let's just forget that this happened. Let's just pretend that it didn't happen, or let's just never talk about this again.
No, they'll say, let's talk, let's take the lessons from what we've learned about ourselves, about our relationship, about whatever, and apply it into a new and improved relationship.
And so in that new and improved relationship, it's okay to talk about the affair, but not in the sense of bringing it up as a punishment, as something that will always have that against you.
But in a way that sometimes you might want to just bring it up and say, wow, remember how we got over this, or remember, yeah, you were like that. That's a different conversation.
And I also want to say something about her sitting there, smoking and asking about flaws.
I think her flaw, I don't know if it's a flaw, but maybe it is, is that she was trying to have a relationship where she is still very much in love and connected to her previous relationship.
Yeah.
And this is like just how can, like the relationship with Aiden had no chance. Even if he would have stayed, I doubt, because it looks like she was so, she's so connected to Big and she's so committed to him.
And all he has to do is to show up in the car, crawl down the window and say hop in. And she would, she would do it in a second. So I don't know if she was like, if she was realizing it.
Maybe she was.
Idit, I love that you're bringing this up because that is to me one of the ultimate questions.
Do you move on faster from your ex by getting back on the horse or do you actually have to take the long road, do the work, date yourself for a little while, learn what makes you happy?
Cause I find it very hard to let go of previous attachments if I don't see a future with a different kind of attachment, especially when it's a Mr.
Big quote unquote, that, you know, it's so toxic that you actually need to learn that a different kind of attachment and a different kind of relationship can also be healthy. So I'm very curious to know, what do you think?
Yeah, I agree. However, I don't know that you want to get this education at the expense of another person because I think he was all in Aiden.
Totally.
With his feelings, with everything. So is it fair to him? I don't think so.
I think if you're still very much connected to your ex, let's say if you know, if you're Carrie and you know, if Big shows up and says, come down and I'm just going to do that, then you're not ready for another relationship.
And if you are going to get into another relationship just to show yourself that there's something better, then you might be doing yourself a favor, but you're destroying someone else on the way and that's not fair.
No. But I think I keep trying to always have this aha moment on this podcast that is like black or white. And when it's white, then you're ready and red and green lights.
But the more I do this, the more I learn that it's like the little steps and the little decisions of maybe knowing that if Mr. Big called and say, come down, I'm here, you wouldn't.
All those little steps add up to the promised land of being healed and maybe choosing better patterns.
Yes.
After that, they have this little moment where Carrie saying like, okay, I'm going to go home. You can tell that there's something there that is not working out. She's like, I'm going to go home because I got to be ready tomorrow.
Myself is at my house and I'm the maid of honor. And the next day when Aiden goes to pick her up, he's being again very goofy, very affectionate towards her and she recoils to every touch from him. Quick question to you here.
Do you think that there we can see someone that feels unworthy of that love because of what she had done?
You know, there are so many things in this. Like whoever wrote this, the script, I think had a lot of symbolism there, like the maid of honor, maid of dishonor, you know?
Yeah.
So little things are like, I think she couldn't, she had to leave because she couldn't stand looking at him knowing that there is this elephant in the room, there's this secret that I'm keeping from you that you don't know.
So she couldn't look at him, she couldn't look at herself in that way, so she had to get away. And I forgot your question.
That's okay. It feels like amongst all that symbolism, we also see Carrie maybe feeling unworthy of his look, his affection, and she recoils at the touch. And I think that is what urges her to finally confess.
And she says it right before the wedding. And she's like, I slept with my ex-boyfriend. And here is, I want to get back to the pin that I placed at the beginning of you and I speaking.
Because he was like, what do you mean? More than once? She's like, yeah, it was more than once.
He was my ex-boyfriend and now it's over. It was horrible. I'm sorry.
But Aiden had no idea. And Natasha, in the episode before, as she's running down the stairs trying to catch Carrie, she says, I knew you were sleeping with my husband. I just didn't know you were sleeping with my husband in my house.
So how many times do you see women having that intuition that something was up? Like, do you see sometimes within your clients that men tend to be more surprised than women or vice versa?
I think both men and women have intuition. It's just that we tend to be more attentive and listen to our intuition where men, they might be feeling something, they just don't know what that is. And so they're like, they're not listening to it.
They're not hoping, they're not alert. And we are a little more alert, some of us. I think I do, I meet many women who felt something was going on, something was not right.
But I also meet the same amount of women who had no idea. We were nothing, no signs. Everything was just as usual.
I think it probably has to do with where we are in society now. We're going now for more connected relationships. We're very much into finding the connection with the one person we're with.
But I don't think we're very good at it. So as much as this is like the ideal, this is what every couple that shows up in my office, this is what they say ultimately that they want.
I want to be more connected, but I don't think we're doing a really good job at it. And so with being disconnected, you are protecting yourself to some extent so you don't get devastated by everything like you would if you were that connected.
So you're less vulnerable. But what also happens when people are disconnected is that they don't notice. They don't necessarily know what is happening.
They don't have access to their partners in our world. And so they don't necessarily know. And so you may not be able to even know if there's a sign because you're not looking for it.
You're not knowing what's going on.
That is so interesting. Do you think that maybe women that had no idea that the affair was going on, find it harder to trust again? Because then I would feel a bit like, okay, what is, like, you're either a sociopath or I'm completely clueless.
Oh, yeah.
This is something that I hear all the time. It's like this sense of I've lost my coherence and I've lost trust in you, but I also don't trust myself to know if this were to ever happen again. Like, is it something in me?
Am I naive? Am I feeling the blank? So how would I even know if this happens again?
I might not notice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
After Carrie says all this, Aiden is just like obviously caught very much by surprise. And he's like, I'm going to go for a walk. And Carrie is just like, but what about the wedding?
And like, will I see you there later? And here I would love to ask you maybe what are the best practices when owning up to an affair?
In terms of timing, who should be in the room? How? Yeah.
Well, not like that.
No one would do it.
Yeah.
Right in the middle of somebody else's wedding, in front of other people, where... I understand why she did it then.
Yeah.
But in reality, most people don't do it like that. Most people don't disclose something like this in the middle of something else going on. So that's a good thing.
You never want to do that. So if you do disclose, you want to make sure that your partner and you have number one privacy because this is not going to go well.
There aren't a lot of people who are going to just be okay and, okay, let's go for dinner, you know?
So you might want to make sure that your partner has time, that they're not like right before going to work or very late at night because you might have to spend all night talking about it and you're going to be tired and distraught.
And just make sure that you understand that when you disclose something like this, there's going to be shock and there's going to be a lot of duality. And so your partner is going to feel that they love you and they hate you at the same time.
They're going to feel like they need a hug from you and they'll tell you to get away from me and don't touch me. You know?
So you have to understand that when you talk about something like this, when you get the push, like get away from me or Emily, you want to respect that, but you don't want to disappear. You don't want to say, Oh, you don't want to speak to me.
Okay, I'll go to the other room and you leave. You leave the other person to stay. No, take a step back.
Say, I'm going to give you the space, but I'm right here. Continue to check in. Let's talk more.
Tell me more. I know. So be mindful and don't be so sensitive of what you're going to be told because there's going to be a person lashing out probably, most likely.
Yeah.
And you to be ready for that.
But make sure that if you're the cheater confessor or confessing, you're the one that makes sure that says, I'm available for whatever you need through this.
I'm here.
And I'm wanting to do, yeah, the work.
Yes.
Whenever you're ready, I'm here. Yeah.
What do you think about the aftermath of the confession? Because obviously here is very fast paced where the wedding is right after. And Aiden even comes around after that.
But like say that you are in a marriage, you have children, there's the confession. I find it very interesting to like, what is there to ask from your partner?
Like if I am the cheater, but I need something, I know that if I were to ever cheat on my partner and I needed something from them, I'd rather die than make any requests while I'm in the dog house, or I'm the one in the wrong.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely don't want to make any requests.
What you can do, not in that case where I think he was very clear, it's over, goodbye. I mean, it sounded like he was very over it, made a decision.
But when you are married, when there are kids involved, when there's more richness to the relationship than a few months of dating, that's where it's not going to just end like that. It's somebody just saying, okay, I'm done. Goodbye.
Turn around and cry. So there's definitely a place for you to offer answers because they're going to want to know, why did you do it?
Yeah.
Was I late? Was I missing something? Was I doing?
There are a million questions, and they deserve answers. And so just put yourself in a place where you're available to answer the questions. Even if you know your partner doesn't want to stay, they deserve answers.
I have, it's not so much my clients, but I've had like around my girlfriends. I've had friends whose husbands left them without a reason. I mean, I'm sure there was a reason for them.
Yeah.
But they never answered those questions.
It was a unilateral decision.
Yeah.
They just one day said, I'm not happy, I'm leaving, packing their stuff and leaving. And that leaves the other person with questions that never end. They always question, like what happened?
Was it me? And so you never want to leave someone with these questions, especially if you created this pain.
Even if they say, I don't want to stay with you, I would be generous to offer, can we just talk and I'm willing to answer your questions, and I'm willing to give you closure, and I'm willing to provide whatever it is that you need to know.
And if you don't need to know anything, that's okay too. But I'm here.
Yeah. Do you think that there's some kind of, I don't know if it's catharsis or like what is behind wanting to know every single detail?
But how did you do it? And like, did you do this with her? And did you go there with her?
And like, did you ever try that?
Yeah. I talk a lot about it with my clients and on my podcast. I think that sometimes people think of it as like an investigation.
Like I need to get all the pieces of the puzzle together. And I need to, like if I had like a thousand piece puzzle, I need to find all of the thousand pieces.
And that's the only way that I'll be able to understand what happened here, to get my sense of coherence back, and that's the only way I can move on.
And I've seen too many times where that is actually not true at all, because you could be spending years in trying to get all the pieces. And so you're just taking years to heal and it's very destructive to not heal.
And I've seen many times where certain pieces of the puzzle don't mean much and they don't heal.
So knowing which restaurant you went to is not going to give you anything other than additional trauma, because every time you pass by this restaurant, you're going to have a, you know, or every time you hear this restaurant, so you really, when
people think about what should I know, you shouldn't go for small details that don't provide a lot of understanding. You should go for questions that give you understanding, that give you meanings, that, you know, these are the types of question you
want to go for. And if you think about it as a puzzle, you know how sometimes you have like, I don't know, the picture is like a castle in the middle of the woods, right? And that's the picture of the puzzle.
You don't need all the shades of leaves in order to understand that there's a castle and it's in the woods. You know?
I love that analogy. Yes. Okay.
So then Aiden comes to say bye to Carrie. And that's when he says, you know, I wish I didn't know about this because I know myself, this is not something that I can easily forgive. What do you think about sometimes people not wanting to know?
Do you see validity and maybe the potential for a healthy relationship without this knowledge?
Yeah. I think among us are a lot of people who are in happy relationships and there's probably an affair going on and they have no clue. You know, it's terrible to think about it.
Yeah.
But that's the reality.
Not all affairs or infidelities are found out. Sometimes people take it to their grave and it can happen. I understand what he says on the personal level.
This is something that I am very different from like how most of my friends think about it. Like I wouldn't want to know. I wouldn't want to know.
And seriously, if this is something that doesn't impact my life, I would prefer not to know. But everyone else, except for maybe two people, everyone else I know tells me, no, I would want to know. I would want to know what I'm dealing with.
So I think it does have to do a little bit with your personality.
And maybe Aiden is the type of guy who would have preferred not to know because I think he loves her so much that he would have been willing to be in a relationship where he loves her more than she loves him, and he would be okay with it.
That piece of information made it impossible for him.
Yeah. I don't know because I think if I were to say like, I'd rather not know. But you know, if I think that when I die, I know everything and I know that.
I feel that maybe there was something in my relationship that I didn't fully understand. My relationship was not what I thought it was.
Because when I sent you the questions before recording today, I told you, like, what about Bridges of Madison where Meryl Streep takes her affair to the grave? I do think she was in a very lonely marriage where that affair wasn't consequential.
It would have just created a lot of, you know, pointless uncomfortability. But otherwise, I'd feel cheated. I'd feel like, oh, so I was living in a parallel reality.
But that's only if you know about it.
I know.
I guess my brain cannot process not knowing. Okay.
So maybe we can jump to the advice of the girls because I'd be very curious, for instance, for Carrie, if she were a client of yours and she came to you, like, what arguments would you offer someone who has cheated and is weighing whether or not to
bring it to someone? And they tell you a little bit about how Aiden is.
If she were my client, I would work with her on trying to realize that she's not ready for the relationship with Aiden because I honestly believe that she is very, very much connected on many, many levels to Big.
It's not so much about whether you're going to tell him and how you're going to tell him. It's, is this the relationship for you? Like, what are you doing?
Here's this guy that loves you and is willing to do anything for you. And you're not fully committed. You're not, yeah.
Yeah.
So this is where I would go with her.
And then depending on what she realizes from that, because she might tell me otherwise, she might say absolutely not involved.
Then I would probably work with her on how to disclose this, because I don't think that she would be able to be in a relationship without disclosing this.
So some people are able to put something in a closet, close a closet and move on with their lives. I don't think she was, she's that type of person. I mean, she couldn't, like she couldn't do it.
But in the scene where they're sitting on the stoop and she's about to tell him again, and then instead of saying it, she says, I love you.
I put myself in her shoes and I'm like, I could never. I'd feel so dirty, but I guess, you know, there's...
But you know, it's a fair question to ask, can someone who loves me betray me? And I can tell you that I've seen that happen too many times to say, people can love and they can have an affair. They can love their partner and they can have an affair.
Or and they can do something outside of the marriage. It doesn't necessarily negate. Sometimes it does, but not necessarily.
So when she said, I love you, I'm not discounting that she was saying, I love you. And I feel like she was doubting that herself, because to what extent?
Yeah, she just wanted to soothe.
As long as big is not around. I love you as long as I don't have anybody else. The definition of commitment is full commitment, is to be with someone and commit yourself and have their back and all of that.
And it's not to be with someone until something better comes along, which I think is kind of what she was doing with Aiden. Maybe I'm judging her a little too harshly.
It was hard to watch though. Okay. Miranda, in this episode, she goes on this speed dating and finds a date because she lies and says that she is an air hostess, and it turns out that he was lying too.
The whole thing's a mess. But maybe as a generic question, because I see this happen a lot today in dating apps, people lying about where they live, their age, their job. Do you think that a relationship is doomed if it starts off on a lie?
Even if it's basic?
I don't know if it's doomed, but I think it's not a good place to start a relationship. If it starts on a lie, then it tells you that this person is capable of showing something else than what they are.
It tells you that this person may not be comfortable with who they are, and you can have all the reasons in the world, and they made it kind of funny in the episode.
It was entertaining, but if this was a real experience, I would say run as fast as you can.
Yeah. Good to know.
For Charlotte, if, because Charlotte is getting married, she is a virgin in this relationship, big flappy air quotes, she hasn't slept with Trey, but then when she goes out with her girlfriends and gets super drunk, she goes knocks on Trey's door,
and she's like, well, today is officially our wedding day, so guess what? Pull your trousers down, because it's going down. And then they have a very failed attempt to sex.
If she were to come to your office in between that night and her walking down the aisle, what would you say to her?
Kind of what Carrie said, you know, it's maybe you don't know, like one time, this, either this or there's so much pressure on him.
A lot of ED, erectile dysfunction is due to performance anxiety, and so maybe that's happening, maybe they're the stress of it.
So to put all of this into like the day of the wedding where everybody is already stressed out, I wouldn't make like, I wouldn't think like, oh my God, be careful. But if it happens for a really long time, then you might want to look into it.
Yeah, I love that. I never thought about that. Okay, Samantha, she has a bit of a tiff with Charlotte in this episode in the middle of Vera Wang with them trying their bridesmaids dresses.
My question to you here is seeing how they butt heads because they always do. Samantha is very sexually active, very open-minded, non-committal, and Charlotte just wants to get married, have sex with the father of her children who she's married to.
Do you think that girlfriends that have very different attitudes towards their sex lives can be close? Yeah.
If I don't see a reason why not.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that in every group of friends there's going to be someone who is more open about it and more literal about it and someone who is much less than that and there's going to be people in the middle. It's okay.
I don't see anything in Samantha's behavior that enforces her opinion in someone else. She's not really feeling her. She's not saying, Oh, you're this level.
He's saying, This is who I am and I love me and I'm okay with it. She did get upset. I can't remember exactly why she stormed out of there with something about the dress.
Yeah, because she wanted to bring the hemline a bit higher.
And Charlotte was just like, Is it okay if maybe one day we don't have to see your next Tuesday or something like that? Like everything is always about how slutty Samantha is. And she was like, Well, I didn't even want to be a bridesmaid.
And then Charlotte says, Well, I didn't want you to be one, but I made you one so that you wouldn't feel left out.
I love this friendship because it's so true. I mean, you can't, there's always going to be someone who is so much like that. And just the fact that they're able to say, Okay, this is who I am.
You know, you like, you love it, you don't love it. That's okay. I'm not making you feel anyway.
And I think she excused herself because she realized, you know, it's just not me. It's not me. I'm being put into a situation where I have to wear something that I hate.
I have to do something that I don't believe in. I'm being put in a very, very uncomfortable position. So she was just looking for, where's the way out?
That's the way out.
Yeah. I do think that Charlotte is super judgmental, but then as she comes into her relationship with Harry, she stops being so judgmental.
Yes.
Okay. And finally for Aiden, do you think that it's best not to know?
I guess we uncovered that, but if somebody came to you like Aiden, that loved her so much and told you, I just wish I never knew because I loved her so much and I wish we could take it back. Do you think that there's a way that that can be repaired?
In what way repair?
Like there's so much love there, but he knows, he wish he never knew. Do you think that you can build on like all the love that was there before or really take it at face value? I know myself, I can't get over things like this.
I would have to have a long conversation with him to know.
But I'm leaning towards it being something that comes from like that's who he is as a person. He knows that he's not going to be able to continue like that with her.
I may use my experience to tell him that if this is a relationship you think can be saved or should be saved or you want it to be saved, then there's a way to do it. Just say the word and I'll show you how. But I wouldn't push him towards that.
He needs to be open towards that. And we need the other party to be ready to do the work because they're going to have to fight for him.
OK, that was the episode Idit.
Thank you so much. I would love for you to maybe share with our listeners where they can find you and what you're working on that you want to share with them.
Yeah, so the best way to find me is on my website. It's my first and last name, idcharoni.com or relationshipexperts.com. They both lead to the same place.
You could read all about what we do, our projects, our services, all of that. I guess my biggest project right now is my Infidelity Recovery Program. It's a coaching program and we work with couples from all over the world.
This is beautiful because we are here in South Florida, and we get to meet people in the UK, in France, in Dubai, any continent, you name it. We've worked with people from the ends. It's lovely because you'll learn so much.
And so that's our biggest project. The program is called It's Okay To Stay, and it's a name that I specifically wanted because of all the shame around someone wanting to stay in a relationship after infidelity.
So it's kind of like me saying, if you want, it's okay, you know, it's okay.
Yeah, I agree.
Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, right?
Yeah.
It's no one's decision. It's your decision and it's possible. My podcast is also, it's called Relationships Uncomplicated.
It's like a wealth of knowledge, really, not just to bring up topics, but to really explain things and give people tools. It's a great one. Yeah, and that's it.
Thank you so much, Idit.
That was super interesting.
You're very welcome.
We'll see you again soon.
You're very welcome. Thank you.
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of And Just Like That, We Found Therapy. If you loved it, follow the podcast, leave a five-star review and send this episode to somebody who needs it. It really helps the show.
Don't forget about our new segment this season, He's Not Your Mr. Big. If you have a love dilemma you want answered by one of our in-house experts, you can now submit directly through the form of my website.
The link is in the show notes. Or if you prefer to keep it personal, slide into my DMs on Instagram at wefoundtherapypod. See you at our next therapy session.
I love y'all. Bye.
