About Affairs

Everyone has their own personal beliefs about affairs.  These beliefs can stem from how we saw adults around us behaving with each other during our childhood.  They can stem from how our parents and other relatives talked about and regarded affairs, from the particular culture you grew up in, and your religious upbringing and beliefs.  [...]

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 [...]

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 followers and fans can feel tremendously let [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 children’s’ needs can function as a welcome distraction from the pain you are in on the one hand; on [...]

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 [...]

I came across an interesting statistic recently; 25% of relationships that start as affairs succeed. Actually, I was surprised, if I had to guess, I would have thought the figure to be much lower. (For an update on this statistic go to “Can Relationships That Start as Affairs Succeed? Revisited”) But a statistic is [...]

I am setting up this blog because I find myself increasingly moved by the efforts of my clients who chose to work through the devastating effects of affairs, whether individually, or in couples and by the profoundly deepening connections that this work can bring, almost as if the couple is discovering each other for the [...]