Will Smith recently talked about revealing to an intimacy coach that he wanted a harem of nearly two-dozen women, including ballet dancer Misty Copeland and actress Halle Berry. In a new interview with Insider, the same intimacy coach explained why couples cheat.
According to Michaela Boehm, couples cheat or divorce due to unexplored fantasies or fears.
"In many people, the gap between what's expected in a committed relationship and what they haven't explored for themselves creates problems," Boehm explained. "That's why so many people get divorced or cheat, or do strange things within the relationship."
Boehm claimed she encourages her clients to visualize their fantasies before acting on them and take note of how they feel during the process. She said the exercise helps clients figure out the relationship they truly want and what changes need to be made in their lives. Boehm added that the approach is used to help people erase the shame of having changing desires as a person becomes older.
"A lot of people just go along for all kinds of reasons," she said. "There typically comes a moment where enough growing up or exploration has happened and the life chosen as a late teenager might no longer fit."
Will Smith echoed the intimacy coach's sentiments during his GQ interview. The actor explained that Boehm's coaching helped him overcome the issue of his desires conflicting with how he was raised to conduct himself in marriage.
"I don’t know where I saw it or some s*** as a teenager, but the idea of traveling with 20 women that I loved and took care of and all of that, it seemed like a really great idea," Smith said. "And then, after we played it out a little bit, I was like, 'That would be horrific. That would be horrific.' I was like, 'Can you imagine how miserable?' What [Boehm] was doing was essentially cleaning out my mind, letting it know it was okay to be me and be who I was. It was okay to think Halle is fine. It doesn't make me a bad person that I'm married and I think Halle is beautiful. Whereas in my mind, in my Christian upbringing, even my thoughts were sins. That was really the process that [she] worked me through to let me realize that my thoughts were not sins and even acting on an impure thought didn't make me a piece of s***."
Source: Insider
