Not sure if I agree with this, but pass it along........does it contradict Harley?
"You think you had an affair because your marriage was bad? Here’s a little test you can try at home. Ask yourself when was it that you had the lowest opinion of your marriage? Was it the week or the day before you started your affair? If you are like most people the answer is no. This is not to suggest that your marriage or anyone’s was always in a state of perfect nuptial bliss. But if someone asked you your opinion back then chances are you would have said your marriage was a good one and that you expected it to last. A basic belief in its worth and long-term survivability is something you held close and didn’t seriously question. An affair is most often not something carefully planned in order to remedy a bad situation. They usually begin rather haphazardly at a Christmas party or on a business trip or something like that.
Now ask yourself when you had the lowest opinion of your marriage and felt the greatest amount of doubt that it would last forever? Let us guess, during your affair perhaps? Suddenly you began to feel like you loved but weren’t in love, that you were comfortable but not excited, and you were no longer certain that your marriage would endure. Some people say that as their affair progressed they could “feel their marriage dying.”
So what is now missing from the marriage that was not missing before? The answer is you. Your passion, your interest, your affection, your devotion, your honesty, your reliance, your faithfulness, and the fullest measure of your love are no longer present. Now the marriage doesn’t seem so good, not as good as it was before, it has become a living arrangement because you are not fully in it. When you are not putting all your energy into the marriage guess what your spouse starts to do? He stops contributing too. It is like taking all the food off the table and then complaining that you are hungry because there is nothing there for you both to eat. So the answer to our test is that bad marriages don’t really make affairs, affairs make marriages really bad.
A final thought is from one of my patients. Her lowest opinion of her marriage occurred during her affair and her opinion of her marriage prior to her affair was that it was pretty good. So when do you think she had her highest opinion of her marriage? After her affair ended and when she had reconciled with her husband! What is the point of all this? It is to recognize that marriage counseling in the aftermath of an affair is a useful component to reconciliation and recovery, particularly in dealing with the damage and pain it caused. But we should remember that the affair was more a product of bad conduct than it was a product of a bad marriage, and the marriage itself is probably stronger and in better shape than we give it credit for. Simply put, if the marriage did not have more love, happiness and vitality than the affair, it would have ended long ago.”
