When Love Feels Like a Cage: How Enmeshment Can Lead to Infidelity

Have you ever felt like you're losing yourself in a relationship—like your identity is slowly blending into your partner’s? That’s enmeshment. It’s when the lines between “you” and “us” get so blurred that individuality takes a backseat. While deep emotional connection is essential in a relationship, enmeshment goes too far, creating a sense of suffocation, obligation, and even resentment.

In this kind of dynamic, one or both partners might feel overly responsible for each other’s emotions. Decisions, feelings, and even personal goals become so intertwined that it’s hard to tell where one person ends and the other begins. Over time, this lack of autonomy can feel stifling—like being trapped in a well-meaning but restrictive emotional cocoon.

And when someone feels trapped, what do they crave? Freedom. Space. A chance to breathe. This is where an affair can start to feel like an escape. Suddenly, there's someone new who sees them as an individual, separate from their role in their marriage. The secrecy and novelty of an affair can provide the rush of independence they’ve been yearning for, making them feel like their own person again.

On the flip side, enmeshment can also set the stage for affairs in a different way. If someone grew up in an overly dependent family dynamic, they might unconsciously recreate the same patterns outside their marriage. They could form overly intimate connections with friends or coworkers, blurring the lines between emotional support and emotional infidelity—sometimes without even realizing it.  

What to Do About It

Breaking free from enmeshment doesn’t mean breaking up—it means learning to create healthy boundaries and rediscovering your own sense of self *within* the relationship. Open communication, self-awareness, and therapy can help shift the dynamic so that love feels like a partnership, not a prison. And when both partners have the space to be themselves, the temptation to seek validation elsewhere becomes far less appealing.

Here are my tips:

First, notice your own patterns. Notice when you self-abandon, over-caretake, are dishonest, or deny your true wants or needs because of enmeshment.

Next, commit within yourself to pausing between stimulus and response, giving yourself more time to develop your truth and communicate it honestly.

Then, navigate this with your partner. When one partner changes, the relationship dynamic changes, which can threaten its stability since it was founded on the previous dynamic. Seek couples therapy if you're having trouble individuating successfully and healthfully within your relationship.

I hope this post served as an invitation for further self-inquiry and enlightenment. Understanding our deeper workings helps us to transcend societal labels about infidelity, and use the experience as a gateway to greater self-awareness and empathy. And that is the most powerful force of healing for all parties.

Lauren LaRusso // Founder