Fantasies of a partner’s infidelity helped a woman confront childhood trauma

In a Modern Love essay for The New York Times, Rachel Sontag recounts that she long fantasized about catching a faithful boyfriend in bed with another woman and that, years later, she discovered a partner named Eddie had been cheating. She describes a recurring fantasy — first crystallized at a wedding — in which she would find an unmade bed and smell betrayal, rage and smash possessions in a cinematic response she would never enact in real life.

The visions tended to arise about six months into relationships as connections deepened; they brought shame, sometimes exhilaration, and made her feel closer to the men she loved, though she never told anyone. Sontag places the fantasies in the context of a fraught childhood: a father who fixated on her, parental blame, a brief period in foster care and leaving home at 19.

In adulthood she dated good men but often fled at the first hint of intense emotion, a pattern she later linked to hypervigilance and a fear of hurting others despite years of therapy. With Eddie, a sleepy slip of his tongue and text messages on a laptop revealed infidelity. She confronted him calmly but later allowed herself a private, furious unravelling.

Eddie texted and called, offering apologies and, Sontag writes, saying, "It’s not your fault, Rach. What I did was not your fault." Hearing those words produced a dizzying relief she had never received from her parents.

Key Topics

Culture, Rachel Sontag, Eddie, San Francisco, Childhood Trauma, Foster Care