About Affairs

The discovery of an affair is traumatic for everyone involved. However, there are important things you can do to help your partner heal over time.

It can be useful to think about trauma as something that wants to heal. If provided with the appropriate conditions, it frequently does. The discoverer of an affair most often experiences their world, their life, their identity, and certainly their marriage as shattered. Natural reactions to this shattering include feeling betrayed, panicked, rageful and vengeful, and ultimately very deep, and previously unimaginable pain. I frequently hear “the ground opened up under me,” or Continue Reading »

Whether you are the other person, the discoverer, or the discovered, virtually all of your relationships have been altered by the affair.

Especially at first, the impulse to keep the affair a secret is usually very strong. Certainly, the person having the affair doesn’t want anyone to know, and the secrecy can even add excitement to the affair relationship. However, if you are feeling conflicted about the affair, it may be painful to have no one to talk to about it.

Once discovered, you and your partner may regard the affair as a shameful secret that must be kept at all costs. Some couples do not disclose the affair to anyone, including extended family. Cultural values play an important role in these decisions. Extended family is more likely to be told in cultures where affairs are more commonplace. Class also plays a similar role. For some, keeping up appearances can feel more important than anything else. And often an affair happens to the “ideal couple” in everyone else’s eyes.

It can be extremely anxiety provoking to imagine the shock, disappointment, criticism, and even rejection that might follow disclosure. You also might be afraid of pressure to make decisions quickly that you don’t feel ready to make. Although enraged and deeply hurt, some discoverers feel they must protect their partner’s reputation. However, you also may be surprised to find that after the initial shock, friends and family are more supportive than you would have imagined.

It is important for you and your partner to evaluate the pros and cons of sharing what has happened with each important person in your lives, weighing the possible benefits and risks. Something to consider is that in general, the more secret something is kept, the more shameful it becomes.

Peggy Vaughn’s survey contained the following question: Was it helpful to talk to friends/family/others? The responses were: 12% – Didn’t talk or not useful. 50% – Helped some, but not as much as I’d like. 38% – Extremely helpful. No one volunteered that it made things worse.

I have just gotten clarification on a statistic I cited in “Can Relationships That Start as Affairs Succeed?” In that post I stated that 25% of relationships that start as affairs succeed. I always thought that sounded a bit high. Recently this figure has been clarified by Frank Pittman. In the study he is citing, the divorce rate among those who married their lovers was 75 percent. The reasons for the high divorce rate included intervention of reality, guilt, expectations, a general distrust of marriage, and a distrust of the person who had the affair. There was no information given about the quality of the other 25% of the marriages.

The following discussion is not meant to imply that all members of a particular culture experience affairs in one way.

Extramarital affairs are most frequently experienced as completely traumatic and immoral in the United States. If a public figure strays from their marriage they are frequently disgraced and fans feel tremendously let down and disillusioned. If this person holds public office, their capacity to lead is frequently questioned, as is their entire character. A spouse who discovers a partner’s affair frequently breaks down emotionally.

In some European countries Continue Reading »

If you have just found out your partner is having an affair, you are probably in shock and feel as if the floor has opened up under you. Suddenly, there is an emergency and a strong need to take some action right away; you may have already left or thrown your partner out, or you may feel on the verge of doing so. But this may not bring you any real relief.

Your sense of safety, of trusting your own experience, of your place in the world, has suddenly been shaken to the core and the person you usually turn to for help is the very person who is the cause! Continue Reading »

Patterns and nuances in affairs do differ depending on sexual orientation. The following discussion about lesbians and affairs describes some of these themes, however, these are generalizations and do not necessarily apply to any one couple.

Emotional ties play a central role in most women’s lives. Nature and nurture both contribute to this. For example, research shows Continue Reading »

Emotional affair? I thought affairs meant extramarital sex!

He tells me they’re just friends. Am I being too possessive?

Can’t I have friends of the opposite sex?

Isn’t it better to give him a long leash?

Emotional affairs have become a hot topic in the last several years, resulting in much needed clarity for some and complete confusion for others. Conflicts arise in couples where one person’s friendship with someone else leaves their partner feeling neglected and angry , but also confused and uncertain about how to respond. “After all, they’re just business associates having lunch. I shouldn’t be so possessive.” Continue Reading »

This is the third in a series of posts addressing children and affairs. In Part I, I described the effects affairs can have on children; in Part II, I addressed the question of whether or not to disclose the affair to your children and started to discuss ways of doing this that are most helpful. Here I focus specifically on your relationship with your infant or toddler around the time of disclosure.

Unfortunately, the intensity of feeling betrayed and humiliated by your partner can make it difficult to care about anything or anyone else. I have heard many stories of outraged parents holding a screaming baby Continue Reading »

Your Role as Parents

No matter how devastated you are, you are still faced with the task of keeping it together for the children. This can be a double-edged sword. The immediacy and sometimes enormity of their needs can function as a welcome distraction from the pain you are in on the one hand; on the other, you may be feeling depleted emotionally and physically and not have much to give. With regard to the latter, it is very tempting to then turn to the children for support, which is a role reversal that is, in the end damaging for children. Whatever you end up disclosing to your child, the overall message should be, Continue Reading »

In this post I will address how children are effected by affairs. In subsequent posts I will discuss the effects on adult children of affairs and offer suggestions for parents involved in affairs on how to best support their children through this difficult time.

Unfortunately, it is frequently true that when caught up in an affair your relationship with your children is altered in the direction of disconnectedness.

In other posts I have talked about the trancelike state of consciousness that one inhabits during an affair. In this altered state links between actions and consequences dissolve; in the euphoric bubble you inhabit you believe you can pursue an illicit relationship and no one will be hurt because you believe that you can control everything and so prevent this from happening. However, this is a grandiose assumption that more and more requires you to lie to, manipulate and avoid intimate contact with your family, sometimes with irrevocable results.

Many couples I see who are trying to work on healing from an affair Continue Reading »