The cold, hard reality is that infidelity is happening all around us. It’s likely happening while you’re reading this. About 30% to 60% of married couples will cheat at least once and an astonishing 74% percent of men and 68% percent of women admit they’d cheat if they were guaranteed to get away with it. But can a relationship revive itself when one of the partners steps out? Sex coach Kim Anami says yes — but it’s going to require stripping away excuses and getting real about why it happened in the first place. 

“It’s totally possible to get past it and to build an even better relationship than you had before,” Anami said on an episode of her podcast “Orgasmic Enlightenment.” “Because the truth is, if the weeds of infidelity were there, the growing conditions were also there for them to happen.”

Many people think the grass is greener when it comes to solid relationships — but the grass is only greener where it’s watered. Much like raggedy, dry gardens, Kim Anami says partners who feel neglected tend to look outside of their relationship for intimate connections. And that’s where trouble begins to brew.

Let’s say two people are in a relationship and one is constantly withholding sex and affection while the other yearns for this intimacy. Lies are being told and Kim Anami says even the smallest lies about how we’re really feeling can wreak havoc on a relationship.

“In the average junk-food-sex relationship, sins of omission, dishonesty, hiding and avoiding the truth, game-playing, and manipulation are the name of the game,” Anami explained. “I’ve seen relationships where the existence of infidelity was tacitly accepted. Meaning: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell, and if you don’t get caught, it doesn’t count.’”

Trick or Cheat: Kim Anami Says Labeling Cheaters Often Isn’t the Answer

The sex expert and vaginal weightlifter prefers not to use the terminology “cheated on” when referring to relationship woes and here’s why. “I don’t like and don’t use that term ‘cheater’ or ‘they were cheated on,’” Anami said. “Because that belies the fact that both people contributed to the demise of the relationship to a place where there was so much distance between them, so much unsaid, that the final physical act of engaging with someone else was part of a long list of slights and separations that were already going on.”

She says for the healing to truly begin, the truth and nothing but truth has to come out. And she acknowledges her “conscious monogamy” mantra for relationships is not for the faint of heart. She insists it requires being present as authentically and honestly as possible. Not everyone is up to the task.

“We go deep and we begin to exist in the sacred territory of powerful, alchemical connection,” Anami described, “where our beds become the power source for our entire lives. We are reborn again and again through our orgasms and the deep connection we have with ourselves and our partner.”

She claimed that as long as both partners are committed to conscious monogamy, infidelity isn’t happening.

“The only place infidelity can happen is within a relationship where the couple are out of sync,” she stressed. “Their relationship has already devolved — or maybe it was always like that — to the place where they tell white lies and outright lies and hide parts of themselves, or their whole selves.”

She shares that as the lies unravel, so does the strength of the relationship and the partner who is feeling “unseen” will begin looking elsewhere for that intimate connection they once had with their partner. It could start as innocently as texting a friend with whom there’s a romantic spark and then suddenly arranging calls with that person, trying to secretly meet up, and turning to that person for advice and attention instead of turning toward the partner in the actual relationship. 

Kim Anami added that looking at surrounding relationships often doesn’t help since she says so many “unconscious relationships are the result of repetition of absorbed beliefs, trauma, and programming.”

She mentioned that in a conscious monogamy relationship, things can’t really disintegrate to a place where infidelity could even happen. “You have the tools to ongoing clear space, resolve issues, to soothe emotional wounds, and to communicate in a deep and profound way,” she said.

If You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, Communication Can Lead to Healing

Anami said one of the ways couples can keep the spark alive is by making time for making love — and that includes scheduling three-hour sex dates. She offers a bevy of sex and relationship solutions in the many sex salon courses she offers online and she admits when she assigns a three-hour sex date to couples as homework, it can often leave them startled. 

“Well, look, initially, it doesn’t have to be three hours of intercourse. It can be all these other things,” Anami said. “Everything I teach about sex and intimacy is guiding you to the place where you can be your own self-healer and master creator of your reality.”

Anami said the magic to making relationships less susceptible to infidelity is staying genuine to oneself and one’s partner. 

She recalls a couple who came to her for advice after the man in the relationship was unfaithful. 

“He had certain sexual desires that he was afraid of sharing with her, and so he didn’t,” Anami said. “He didn’t want to risk her leaving him, which was something that had happened in the past.” 

Eventually, he indulged in his fantasies with someone outside the relationship. To heal their union, Anami said they became radically honest with each other and began communicating for the first time. “They were open and shared and their intimacy grew tenfold,” Anami said. “They were in a much better place than they were at any time in their marriage, and now they had ongoing tools to use to maintain that space and to keep evolving it.”