Affairs of the Heart – Affairs in the Making

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Although our relationships “take place” in public, outsiders know little about the intimate environment we create with another person. No one has continuous access to our intimate relationships, not our closest friends, relatives, or many times even the children who live with us. What’s more, we actively generate privacy by giving our various publics only selected bits and pieces of information about our private undertakings. We work to sustain a public impression of our relationships in keeping with the image we want to convey.

 

In That Garden Fair Came Launcelot Walking; This Is True, the Kiss Wherewith We Kissed in Meeting that Spring Day, I Scarce Dare Talk of the Remember'd Bliss by: Florence Harrison (Artist)

In That Garden Fair Came Launcelot Walking; This Is True, the Kiss Wherewith We Kissed in Meeting that Spring Day, I Scarce Dare Talk of the Remember’d Bliss by: Florence Harrison (Artist)

One form of relationship risks jeopardizing all other privacies. Affairs these untidy, emotionally tangled, tenacious patterns of secretiveness, betrayal, and seduction call to us beyond the potentially troubled present relationship from the birthplace of unmet need. For an Affair has more to do with meaning than sex.

 

Love and betrayal, those powerful and human themes are most dramatic in our affairs, adulteries, and infidelities. History is replete with recounting the great passions and deadly secrets, deep love and idyllic illusions. No wonder Affairs capture our curiosity and provoke our judgment.

 

Not all human entanglements are the same, nor do they all call for the same response. To assist you in making the complexity of human functioning more clear, I offer the following distinctions to counter the more popular intolerance, “It makes no difference, it’s all the same.”

 

  • Adultery: a legal term defined as “sexual relations with someone other than one’s spouse, domestic partner, or any relationship committed to sexual exclusivity.”
  • Infidelity: literally “unfaithfulness or disloyalty,” breaking of a promise or vow.
  • Affair: “an illicit amorous relationship or liaison.”

 

Accurate statistics on affairs are hard to assemble due to the secrecy intrinsic to affairs inhibiting most research, however, the following can be said with some assurance:

 

  • Affairs are significantly associated with dissatisfaction within a marriage
  • Affairs are increasing among younger women at a rate greater than men
  • Social background does not influence a person’s tendency to have an affair
  • Premarital sex is correlated with the likelihood of having an affair
  • Statistics together suggest that about 70% of marriages experience an affair
  • Woman are more likely to participate in an affair sooner than their husbands when emotional satisfaction within a marriage is a governing principal

 

scarlett_letterDuring a recent interview I was asked, “After being a Marriage & Family Therapist for 39 years, what would you identify as the top 5 marital problems today?” Honestly, I said I didn’t think there were any martial problems, just adjustments. I went on to say, what I think we are witnessing is a number of unresolved individual problems being brought into our marriages causing marital repercussions, but are truly individualistic in nature, and should be addressed in individual therapy not marriage counseling. Adultery emanates from an unfulfilled individualistic need, which if unaddressed can undermine a relationship. The failure of either party to address the other member’s emotional need is one of the greatest threats to marital satisfaction.

 

Next months article is “How To Affair Proof Your Relationship.”