Hiker, what do you think caused your wife to have an affair?

Mickey,

Well, that is the million dollar question, isn't it?

The short answer is: I don't know.

As Dr. Gunzburg says, it isn't important that we know why:


That doesn't mean I haven't asked myself over and over why it happened. Despite what Gunzburg says about a "hole in their character," you can't just chalk it up to character issues or flaws. We all have those, of one kind or another.

I thought back to my days in college and asked myself why I didn't get involved in drugs or any of the other kinds of trouble that were so prevalent then. The answer I came up with is that besides knowing it was wrong, I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I didn't want to lose their respect. One of the hardest things for me to have to hear was my father saying, "I'm disappointed in you," whenever I did something wrong.

A few years ago I attended a summer college class. This beautiful blond about twenty years younger than me was obviously trying to put the moves on me; sitting next to me no matter where I sat, trying to engage me in conversation, inviting me to lunch, etc. Was I attracted to her? Yes. Did I avoid an affair because of my marital commitment? Well, partly. But when I think back now I believe another motive was that I did not want to lose the love or the respect of my wife (I guess I always assume these things can't remain a secret).

And so maybe Dobson is correct when he says infidelity starts with the cheating partner losing respect for their spouse. As it happens, I had tremendous respect for my wife.

But then again, if that is the case, I don't know why she would lose respect for me.

It wasn't the fact my wife is beautiful and intelligent and kind that caused me to marry her. I've dated lots of women who had those characteristics. Ironically enough, I now understand that one of the main reasons I wanted to marry her was that I thought we shared the same basic values.

Maybe one of the reasons couples grow apart is that one spouse's values change while the other's remains the same or goes in another direction.

Anyway, if her values changed over time, then it might be that she came to disrespect my "old fashioned" moral code.

But all this is just conjecture. When it comes down to it, I don't really know why she had an affair and I don't think she really knows why either.

bump for a newbie.

Romantic affairs create an almost inescapable trap. The steps to the end are predictable, but like a speeding train heading for the open drawbridge, knowing what is going to happen doesn’t always help you stop it.

1. For any number of reasons (none of them justified) one spouse secretly begins an affair after becoming attracted to another person.

2. The cheating spouse “falls in love” and begins rationalizing his/her actions.

3. By comparing their affair with their marriage, cheaters suddenly come to the conclusion that they were not as happy in the marriage as they should have been, and begin finding fault with their spouse, their marriage, or both. (Dr. Glass calls this comparing a Stage 1 romance with Stage 2 love.)

4. The betrayed spouse eventually discovers the affair and either immediately walks away from the marriage, or more often, tries to save it.

5. The cheating spouse can’t bring him/herself to end the affair and tries to juggle both relationships for a time.

6. The betrayed spouse’s pain and frustration build up, occasionally causing lovebusting arguments with their spouse, or the betrayed spouse runs a good Plan A, but fence-sitting results.

7. The betrayed spouse’s lovebusting feeds the cheating spouse’s rationale for staying with the OP, and may eventually provide the cheater with the justification for divorcing the betrayed spouse, or:

8. After making every effort to save the marriage, the cheating spouse’s fence-sitting causes the betrayed spouse to reach the limit of his/her endurance and calls it quits.

9. The couple divorce. The betrayed spouse is unhappy but works on rebuilding his/her life. The kids are also unhappy. The cheating spouse’s affair eventually ends. He/she may come to the conclusion that the OP was not really their soulmate after all. He/she may be drawn back to their former spouse, realizing that things may not have been quite as bad in the marriage as they first thought, but by then the damage is too great to recover the relationship.

10. The betrayed spouse, having learned much about marriages and relationships, finds someone else and creates a better life for him/herself. The kids are juggled back and forth between their parents and appear to have adjusted to this new life, but in fact, they will always have suffered at least some adverse emotional damage as a result of the split. The cheating spouse, having ended the affair and given up the prospect of restoring the relationship with their former spouse, begins seeking the same romantic thrill he/she found in the affair through dating.

11. The cheater’s search for a passionate relationship can go on indefinitely as he/she stays with a partner until the romance fades, then moves on to the next partner. If the cheater marries again, the same issues that caused the failure of the previous marriage will re-appear.

12. The cheater may seek counseling, which may eventually assist him/her in building a good relationship with someone else. The cheater will think of their previous marriage in one of two ways:
a. The cheater will always wonder how things could have been with their former spouse had they not sabotaged the relationship, or:
b. The cheater successfully convinces him/herself that their previous marriage was a failure that was not their fault, thus suppressing the guilt for the affair.

The tragic irony, of course, is that it is the affair that destroyed the marriage, and one way or another, the affair itself will burn out. In other words, something that was destined never to last (the affair) destroys something that was intended to last a lifetime (the marriage).

Hiker

You just wrote my EX WW's future. I am going to print this, save it and give it to her at the appropriate time. She will think I am a prophet.

This is most tragic, especially for my DS. We've broken his family, his core.

I find it amazing how you are able to be so analytical, amidst all of this turmoil. I am always grateful to see your thought provoking posts...

Thanks, Silent.

I think you've found, as I have, that one of the keys to relieving your own suffering is by trying to help others.

Hiker, I'm at number 8 about to go to number 9. Dr. Harley told me to sit it out for at least two years. I can't do it. Maybe I'm just a wimp.

Mickey51, you are NOT a wimp! This stuff is painful, and can be compounded by your feeling of humiliation, disrespect, and soooo much more; it takes a strong person to last even one nanosecond past discovery...

Mickey,

Silent's right -- you're not a wimp. There are a lot of things to consider in trying to "wait out the affair." I'm not so sure that it isn't more damaging to try to wait it out, because over that length of time you have actually established a whole new relationship with your spouse that isn't based on romance, affection, or sexual fulfillment because she is getting that from someone else. Suppose the affair ends and she says, "hey, I'm sorry but I don't think of you in romantic terms anymore, but I want to keep you as a friend." Wouldn't that be a sock in the kisser!

As Silent said, it is a credit to your character that you didn't just get up and walk out of the house the minute you found out about the affair.

I feel I've done everything to try to save my marriage; now it's time for me to learn a few lessons from this terrible experience and move on. I've got my son to think of -- I don't want this marriage to be his model.

I'm sure these are all things you've considered as well.

hiker-can you take a minute to read my recent posts on the thread mimi started for me? i'd like your perspective if you have time

thanks
eav

I just posted it.

Steve Harley characterizes some WSs as "chasers," meaning they do all the hard work of pursuing the affair relationship and keeping it going. That is certainly the case with my wife.

I really feel, and I think I am borne out by information I have heard about the OM, that he is a classic womanizer who knows all the right buttons to push with certain types of women. What type of woman is that? At least one characteristic they share is poor self-esteem. I'm sure there are other factors that define the kind of person who falls easily under the romantic "spell" of someone else, but I don't have time to enumerate them all right at the moment.

Of course, the source of the power of the OP's influence is their ability to play the game of intimacy/distance in the relationship. That is to say they know when to allow closeness and when to put a little distance between themselves and the WS to make them want them even more. It is a way to maintain the WS's infatuation for them, and in my opinion it is primarily a psychological game that has little to do with physical appearance or sexual performance, etc.

In fact, it's probably fair to say that Dr. Harville Hendrix comes closest to answering the whys of this phenomenon with his theory of attraction to negative qualities.

Quick question...my husband was involved in a romantic affair--the whole i love you, but not 'in love' with you thing..., the sexual part started 9/20....found out 11/7, ended 11/26...supposedly...what do you mean "inversely proportional to the length of the affair" Am I to assume he's probably still seeing her even though I don't have any signs that he still is?

DesireWisdom,

"Inversely proportional to the length of the affair" means that the chances of marital reconciliation diminish the longer the affair lasts, and conversely, the chances of saving the marriage increase with short-length affairs. This is only a general observation; there will always be exceptions.

Whether your husband is still engaged in his affair is something you will have to find out one way or the other, but here are a few signs you might watch out for (and I'm sure other posters can contribute to this list);

1. He refuses to get counseling.
2. He is obviously keeping secrets from you, such as secret e-mail accounts, changed passwords, intercepted phone or credit card bills.
3. He seems distant.
4. He seems to pick arguments over insignificant issues or:
5. He has episodes where he does something unusually nice for you out of what might be guilt.
6. His daily habits have changed so that there are times that you can't account for his whereabouts.
7. He seems to come up with excuses to get out of making love to you.

He is actually doing #'s 1, 3, and 4. He has changed his daily habits, but I can actually account for more of his time away from work. However, I cannot account for his time during work hours when she can come by his office at any time. She is a student at his workplace and they can meet at any time during the day. He has a private office with no secretary and the campus is huge so meeting during the day is easy for them. (i posted a general story on another thread a few days ago: MB Weekend for Affairs?) He has given me all passwords, but he can easily make a new email account or use his office phone or cell phone (and delete the call on the phone log) to make calls. He didn't seem to have contact with her over the winter break, but now that he is back at work I wonder. I probably should go and check up on him at the office, but it is true that he'll probably get annoyed at me if I do that.

We are registered to go on the MB Weekend this January, but I wonder if it will help... should I make sure the affair is ended...he says he has no reason to lie anymore and if he's seeing her, he'll tell me...is him getting annoyed at my checking up on him just a sign that it isn't over? He says he's trying...and he does seem 'nice' to me...just not the kids (see other post)...

Thanks for your insight, it is helpful...

Not necessarily. Nobody likes to be checked up on. Actually the fact that he is going with you on the MB Weekend is great news.

I think if I were you I would continue to check up on him as discreetly as possible. You don't want him to be annoyed with you, but after all, he has broken your trust.

Dr. Harley will provide some great help to you in this matter.

Good luck.

Interesting comment. Its that distance part that seems to be a weakness for the BS. It sounds a lot like the appeal of the OP is that they could care less whether they are with the WS or not. Whether that is actually true, the WS seems to believe it and dreadfully fear it. What is so appealing about a person who could care less whether they are around you or not.

And the real kicker is that in many cases, the BS can never get the WS to believe they may actually lose them (the BS). Its like the OP just hints at it being over and the WS freaks out, but the BS has to go to plan B, then separated and sometimes even D before they believe it.

It seems that the WS just goes into crisis management. The OP could leave at any moment so better give that more attention, while the BS isn't going anywhere, so no need to deal with that now.

It reminds me a little of when people assume the most expensive thing is the best. Sort of like this OP must be really great if they are so willing to give me up, I have to pay a high price to keep them, so they must be worth it.

I sometimes wonder if the MB approach is a little too controlled or reserved or strategic in dealing with romantic affairs. I wonder if a better approach rather than plan A, B, etc. is to ratchet up the crisis atmosphere in the M. No LB's mind you, but become erratic, unpredictable, a crisis creator rather than being a lighthouse.

rprynne,

I should have clarified my statement to indicate that I was referring to a particular kind of romantic affair; one in which one of the affairees is truly romantically attached while the other is in it for other reasons: sex, ego boost, etc. I didn't mean to imply that all romantic affairs operate under these dynamics, though I would guess that most are unbalanced in that there is almost always one whose love is stronger than the other's.

In a situation where one of the affairees suffers from low self-esteem, the use of distancing by the "stronger" partner causes the "weaker" partner to try to form an even closer attachment. They may even enter a panic mode, a la Fatal Attraction. It can create a desperation in the weaker partner to hold on to the affair because losing the lover would be another crushing blow to his/her already low self-esteem.

Then there is the common human condition of want, which is often increased when the object desired seems to be something you cannot have.

Which is why Plan B sometimes brings the WS back. It forces the decision of one or the other (and why the BS must make it believable.)