Eva Longoria Just put up with Tony Parker. He smiles. easy. Fifteen years later she filed for divorce, citing his alleged affair with the wife of one of her teammates.
The Internet did what the Internet does. “Adult behavior.” “Iconic Ex.” “Why can’t my divorced parents do this?”
And the picture is certainly beautiful. But I want to slow it down. Because what you’re looking at, two people standing next to each other without betrayal flying through the air, is nothing. That smile took years. Maybe you will never see the tears. The conversations neither of them will ever publish.
So, before we shower them with post-divorce intercession, let’s talk about what it actually takes to go from “You cheated on me on a national stage” to “Sure, let’s take the picture.”
Something that actually breaks
In my office, I talk about things the same way I talk about a broken window. The glass is on the floor, and everyone wants to know who threw the stone. But the real damage is that the room is no longer safe. The wind comes and the temperature drops.
In terms of attachment, an affair brings a third party into the underlying bond. Your nervous system, when you are partnered, is based on two beliefs. I am your priority. I am enough for you. An affair tells the betrayed partner’s body the opposite. You are not my priority. You are not enough.
This is why the betrayed partner can’t just “get over it.” They have lost their truth. They look back at the last vacation, the last anniversary, the last “I love you” whispered in the dark, and wonder what’s real. It’s a kind of psychological vertigo
And this is the part that gossip headlines never pick up on. An affair is hardly a single betrayal. It’s six or seven betrayals crammed into one word. You weren’t there for me. You didn’t think about my feelings. You lied to my face. You made me feel stupid in front of our friends. You turned me on when you asked. Then, too, I slept with someone else. Each of these needs its own conversation. Her own sadness. If you want to understand how these layers stack up, here’s the science behind emotional versus physical infidelity, and why they both set off the same nervous system.
Why couples get stuck for years (and sometimes never get out)
Here’s what I see all the time. The couple comes after two, three or five years of love affair. They stayed together. They “did the work.” They are fine. And then every few weeks, it explodes.
It is stimulated. He’s late. He puts his phone away during dinner. Suddenly, she was back in 2009, asking questions, checking receipts. He is the one who is lost and turns his eyes. He sighs. He slides into his chair. “Oh my god, are we doing this again? I’ve apologized a thousand times.”
This eye roll is the moment most couples die. Years after the fact.
He thinks she will never leave him. She thinks he never got it. They are both exhausted. They’re both right, in a way, and that’s what makes it brutal. If you want to know where you sit in your own version of this pattern, you can figure out your relationship pattern in a few minutes.
The reason why couples like Eva and Tony are standing next to each other smiling, while other couples are still screaming in the kitchen at 11pm, is not about who is “more mature”. It’s about whether someone, at some point, stops trying to get through the hard part.
No one offers mercy to a cheater
I’ll say something unpopular. We have to find space to empathize with the partner who betrayed. Yes, even them.
When I slow down the moment of attention during a session, I don’t see any jerks. I see a frightened man. When you talk about this issue, his nervous system doesn’t hear the words, “I’m hurting and I need you.” He hears, “You’re bad. You’ll always be bad. You’ll never be free from this.” An eye roll is not arrogance. It’s despair. The collapse of a person who feels that he is serving a life sentence.
When I look at the partner who cheated, I don’t see a woman trying to punish him. I see a woman whose body has just risen with danger. She doesn’t complain. It comes true. Are you still here? Do you still get it? Is it safe?
Both of these people make sense. They both drown. He is immersed in what I call a combination of shame and a deep belief that he is a monster. She’s dizzy, still trying to figure out what’s real.
That’s why “communicate better” is useless advice. You can read every book about the science behind red flags in a relationship and still get ambushed by your nervous system at Starbucks because he was having coffee with her there.
What I will actually tell them
If Eva and Tony had walked into my office in 2010, this is what I would have told them, and what I would say to every traitor sitting across from me.
You don’t have to get good again. Stop trying.
The traitor almost always rushes. When did it end? When will he forgive me? When will you trust me again? And I have to tell them, gently, that rushing is the problem. Your partner’s organism is millions of years old. He can tell the difference between strategy and reality. Between “I want this to end” and “I hurt you in a way that I would completely understand if you never forgave me.”
The sentence that changes things isn’t “I’m sorry, can we move on.” It’s “I expect that for the rest of your life, you will see something, a song, a city, a name, and you will be moved by it. And I will always be there to hold the hand of the part of you that I hurt.”
This is the missing experience. Not a strategy. Pose.
To the unfaithful partner, I say: Your bringing up the matter is not weakness. It’s your body checking the locks. You are allowed to check the locks.
What the picture really shows
So, when you see Eva and Tony smiling 15 years later, don’t read it as “they’ve moved on.” Read it like this: At some point, someone stopped rushing. Someone lets the other person feel that way for as long as they need. Someone held the hand of the part that hurt him.
This is what the picture shows. No closing. Not maturity. Just two people finally leaving the truth in the room, and finding out that it didn’t kill them.
That’s the thing about true reform. They don’t look like fireworks. It looks like a calm smile, 15 years too late.
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Figs, founder of Empathi, and his wife, Teale, are San Francisco-based couples therapists, relationship experts at Stars and Silicon Valley, and founders of Empathi, and built Figlet, our AI relationship coach, an AI relationship coach trained in their clinical work.
