Brand new book recommended by Harley on his radio program --
Shirley Glass, "Not Just Friends"
People in affairs often make light of the relationship by saying, "We're just friends." The book is really good. It gave me several insights. The main ones I remember are:
1. Men often consider an affair to be sexual intercourse, whereas women think of it as passionate kissing. (My H went to oral sex. It matters to me, but not that much. I think I would have recovered from better from a shorter affair with sexual intercourse or one in which he told me and not I called Sophia's husband and he got the truth out of Sophia.)
2. It takes two to make a marriage. That should be obvious, but I have been the one running around to therapists, reading books, etc. Tom just told me this week that he is committed to our marriage but he needs time to work on himself first and he is not in a hurry. I'm discouraged by that attitude, especially since he has been sleeping in our son's room. It seems just fine to him to have a "marriage of convenience."
3. Lots of people are in bad marriages. Not all of them react by having affairs. People may wander into emotional intimacy but it takes a choice to continue after a proposition. People who have affairs often are ones who do not set up appropriate boundaries with members of the opposite sex, and many of them think they would never have an affair. Once they have become emotionally intimate, they can start to justify their actions -- I have a terrible wife, Sophia cares for me and Kathy doesn't, no one will find out so no one will get hurt, it's not an affair unless we have intercourse, what I do with Sophia in secret will have no impact on my relationship with Kathy as long as Kathy doesn't find out...And the best one was.... I only had contact with Sophia during work hours! As if that matters at all.
I thought the book was better at explaining how people get into affairs than at explaining how to recover from them, but perhaps part of the recovery is for the betrayed spouse to understand how this could have happened.
<small>[ July 05, 2003, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: broken heart and arm ]</small>
