Upside Down,
I don't know where the 98% break up of affairs within six months comes from. The stat most often quoted around here is Dr Harley's statement that most (about 95%) end within two years. There has been some question lately as to whether that is two years from the beginning of the affair or two years after discovery.
Frank Pittman already mentioned has stated that in his years counseling with couples on the verge of divorce that he cannot recall a case where reconciliation did not occur when there was not an affair going on during counseling. He also says that in the cases where it seemed there was no affair and the marriage failed after counseling it was later discovered that there was in fact an affair during that time.
Face to face interviews seem to indicate that between 4 and 5% (for women and men respectively) admit to having had at least one affair. But those numbers also turn out to be the same when people are asked about having an affair within the past 12 months.
The low number might be related to people not being willing to admit doing something wrong in a face to face interview since according to the same surveys 70-80% of people interviewed said that they thought adultery was wrong.
Those who deal with infidelity, some already mentioned and others, suggest that the real numbers are more like 40% of women and 60% of men have had at least one affair during their marriage. Many of these are never discovered and considering that many well known therapists advise against admitting to an affair the numbers might be closer to the truth.
Completely anonymous on-line results indicate that the 40 -60% numbers are more accurate. These surveys too are flawed in most cases as most were funded, sanctioned or conducted by magazines, mostly men's magazines and a few women's magazines, that also tend to run compatibility surveys, ongoing columns dedicated to describing your "best" affair of all time and things of that nature.
When you stop to think that most people do not even recognize an emotional affair as an affair at all the percentages could go very high in deed. We here at MB have seen first hand that an EA can be as damaging to a marriage as any physical affair. So to say that unless there was penetrative sex involved it doesn't count as an affair is misleading at best. Remember Bill Clinton? "I did not have sex with that woman..."
The fact is that not all affairs result in divorce though it can be said that most do. Since just over half of all marriages in America end in divorce the probability of remaining married to your first spouse are not quite as high as calling a coin flip on the first try.
I would say that most people who are involved in an affair as either the betrayer or the betrayed never make it to marriage builders and of those that do the rate for those who remain married is significantly less than the divorce stats in general. To say that all of these marriages are truly recovered is a stretch in my opinion.
Now the question comes up as to whether or not those who attempt to save their marriage by using Marriage Builders methods is higher than the general numbers for all marriages wracked by infidelity. Since the published failure rate in general for marital therapists is about 84%, I would suggest that MB stands a better than average rate of success.
But here's the thing to consider in that. Most people here are do-it-yourselfers when it comes to marital recovery. While there are some real counselors who have posted here over the time I have been here, their specialties are seldom marriage recovery after infidelity. Dr Harley says that for those who use his methods of recovery there is a 100% recovery rate. That sounds astounding, but it requires that BOTH the BS and the WS be on board, both counsel with the coaching center and both are willing to examine themselves and take extraordinary precautions going forward.
It also requires that both WS and BS commit to meeting each others ENs and doing away with love busters for the rest of the time they are married.
Published statistics for failure of second marriages according to the National Institutes of Mental Health are at about 75%, 50% higher than first marriages. National Institute of Health Statistics also has numbers on this if I recall correctly. I don't know if they keep statistics regarding what percentage of these second marriages began as an affair, but as already pointed out there are things about an affair that make for less than stable marriages.
These things can include:
* Guilt by one or both affair/marriage partners who some day do face the fact that they broke up a family and perhaps two families.
* A general mistrust of marriage.
* A mistrust of the affair/marriage partner based on experience.
* A sense of sadness over what was lost usually more pronounced for the one who gave up the most to continue the affair.
* A feeling of "Is that all there is?" related to having given up the bad/old marriage for the new only to discover that the new is not "better" at all.
* An inability to cut ties to the former spouse usually most often seen in cases where kids were part of the first marriage.
* The fact that an affair is a purely selfish act and while it can give you a lot of exciting times during the affair, selfishness is hardly the way to build a lasting marriage.
Percentages of third marriages are worse than for second marriages and by number 4 or 5 marriage is seemingly disposable.
Now consider the tendency in our society to shack up instead of getting married which shows a marked lack of the ability to commit and you can see that affairages are pretty much doomed from the start.
In order to recover a marriage, both BS and WS have to be committed to making the marriage better than it was before the affair. Though this commitment is usually slower to come by for the WS than the BS, it can sometimes be the other way around as evidenced here on these forums. But it is a requirement that both be fully committed and willing to do the work it takes to recover.
The biggest obstacle to recovery BTW is often the BS rather than the WS. It is harder to get over being betrayed than it is to forget about one's affair partner it seems. The WS must also find what it is that they are lacking, not from the marriage but within themselves that allowed them to make the decision to cheat. It might point to a character flaw or a lack of personal boundaries or even some weakness that they will have to be willing to protect in the future. Just like an alcoholic who heads down the road of recovery, a WS can never again allow the conditions that made the affair possible to exist.
I linked some sources for statistics and analysis of the same on another thread over the weekend. If you don't find it let me know but you can find a lot of information by using Google to look for infidelity or affair statistics. Most things you will find will not be the sources themselves but quotes of them, most often just like here without any citations given as to source. The problem with the sources themselves is that they are usually just raw numbers and can be very confusing and even misleading unless you are used to dealing with such things. Ever read somebody’s doctoral thesis? Exciting read those are...if your name is Einstein.
Mark
Note: The statements of the poster do not necessarily reflect the views of this website, it's founder or anyone associated with Marriage Builders in any way including most of the on-line community here after called the forums. Hey, you get what you pay for, right?
