AFFAIRS AND DIVORCE
by Dr. Daniel A. Bochner
Why do people have affairs? One of the primary reasons for having an
affair is that cheaters want to ruin their marriages. Of course that's not the
only reason for having an affair. It is possible to fall in love outside one's
marriage by accident, especially if one is not getting his or her needs met
inside the marriage. But really that goes in the category of unconsciously
needing to ruin one's marriage, doesn't it? There are also many people who
simply have a hard time controlling their sexual or flirtatious impulses even
though they believe they are in love with their spouses. But really that
person is not fully engaged within their marriage if their own impulses so
easily overwhelm how their behavior will affect their spouse. There are also
people, believe it or not, who know darned well that having an affair will not
result in a divorce because their spouse will allow it without serious
confrontation. Those individuals, it could be argued, don't really have a
marriage.
You see, affairs occur in a state of unhappiness. The person who has
the affair feels a need for excitement at the least, and typically they are
looking for a release from the drudgery they perceive within their marriage or
their life circumstances. The problem with that is, we all know the grass
appears to be greener on the other side of the fence. We also know that
marriage is often extremely difficult. That's a powerful combination. When
it's getting difficult to pay the bills or when one of the children is having
problems, couples often get bogged down in blaming each other instead of
working together. In difficult circumstances it's especially likely that a
spouse will seek a way out. Someone outside the marriage, someone who is
not associated with the problems impacting the marriage, can be very
attractive indeed.
Sometimes things really have gone bad within the marriage. The
spouse who seeks an out has grown dissatisfied, or perhaps both partners are
miserable. It could be that one spouse has started taking the other for
granted. Maybe one spouse feels the other is “lazy,” “foolish,” “messy,” or
“mean.” That person might seek someone who is “active,” “smart,”
“organized,” or “sweet.” In the desperation within their minds, the person
perceiving awful traits within their spouse just absolutely must escape, and
when they find someone who appears to be the antithesis of their spouse,
their deep unmet needs and untapped insecurities, all of which have been
conjured up within their discontent, create an irresistible urge toward this
perceived anti-spouse.
Unfortunately making decisions or letting yourself fall in love when
you're feeling lousy makes for lousy outcomes. People generally don't really
know the person with whom they cheat the same way they know their
spouse. Although they clearly see all the attributes they need within their
paramour, what they see is merely a projection of their perceived answer to
their needs (please see my article, “The Dating Fantasy,” for a fuller
discussion of this process). It is the fulfillment of those unmet needs and
untapped insecurities that is sought, and it is that fulfillment that seems to be
found. Typically, those very same unmet needs and insecurities led to the
marriage that now appears to be defunct, even if things looked much
different at the inception of the marriage. The new love is not truly a love at
all. The new love is, most typically, merely grass that appears to be very
green.
If the real problem is the marriage, there is no good reason that an
affair would be the answer. The answer would be to either fix the marriage
or seek a divorce in an appropriate fashion. In fact, sometimes an affair is
merely an escape hatch for an unhappy spouse who can't confront their
partner about the problems in the marriage. An affair is considered
unforgivable much of the time and thus, with one big bombshell, the
unhappy spouse avoids the whole uncomfortable process of working things
out. They have often already convinced themselves that the marriage is
unworkable and they just want it to end without discussion. The
discontented spouse believes the affair will make them happy and they don't
want to deal with any mess.
Unfortunately, in the process of avoiding the work it would require to
confront the problems in the marriage, the discontented spouse moves so
quickly that many important aspects of their situation are ignored. Most
importantly, it is extremely rare that the discontented spouse has given any
real thought to how their own psychology contributed to the problems they
experienced in the marriage. They have assumed that their unmet needs
could not be met by their spouse. Most of the time, however, because they
have not tried to work out the problem, they don't really know whether it
could be worked out. Even worse, they take no responsibility for what they
have done within their marriage, and tend to think their own perspective is
100% clearly correct.
What if the real problem, to oversimplify, is that the unhappy spouse
has an extreme need for freedom, but they perceive their partner as
unreasonably controlling. Thus, they find someone who would seemingly
give them as much freedom as they like? What if one spouse has an
exaggerated need for togetherness, so much so that they perceive their
partner as abandoning them whenever their partner needs to leave. They
then have an affair because they want someone who pays them more
attention and seemingly has little need for independence? There are
thousands of similar examples. The point is, often the cheater actually
perceives themselves as vindicated in their affair or desire for divorce, but
they make no attempt to see their own part in the problem.
Another significant factor is the denial that overcomes the cheater while
in the throws of their affair. This denial causes the cheater to forget how
really terrible it is to have an affair. People forget about the effect the affair
and/or divorce might have on their children, as well as on their spouse. Even
more amazing is the fact that the spouse who is having the affair fails to
think forward to how a divorce might affect themselves. They forget what
they once had with their spouse and why they've been together. They forget
about how difficult it is to build a relationship over time. Perhaps most of
all, they forget how much they love to spend time with their children within
the context of the nuclear family, and they give no consideration to how
fragmented things will be for, and with, their children if there is a divorce.
A byproduct of the cheater's denial is that they start thinking they have
nothing in common with their spouse. This is a byproduct of denial since, of
course, children are the biggest thing people could possibly have in
common. The spouse who cheats does not fully recognize how unimportant
their differences with their spouse are when compared with having children
together. How could anything be bigger? And for anyone who has enjoyed
the company of their children while with their spouse, the completeness in
the feeling of the cohesive happy family, it is impossible to see the grass as
greener anywhere else. Children fully thirst for the love of their parents
together, and when it's clear that their parents love each other, children drink
in the abundance of that love. Clearly, if there is any chance that a spouse
could be in love with their partner, that is the very best chance for happiness
for all.
Beyond the huge issue that is the happiness of the children, it's obvious
that what could be called “affair denial” also makes the cheater forget other
important changes that will be necessary when divorced. Financial well-
being after divorce is often shattered. Not many people can afford to
maintain life as it once had been with the advent of two households.
Divorcing couples also often do not seem to consider what it will be like to
either have the children alone for half their time or to have much less contact
with them. Most divorcees feel lonely when their children are gone and
overwhelmed when their children are with them. That eventuality is
typically equally difficult for both spouses, regardless of who might be
perceived as responsible for the divorce.
So what is the thing to do if you're unhappy in your marriage? It may
sound contradictory, but the first thing to do is be honest with yourself about
your unhappiness. If you're trying to fool yourself into being happy, or if
you're managing or denying your absence of happiness, you leave yourself
especially vulnerable to meeting your needs in inappropriate ways. When
someone is unhappy but is using their emotional resources to feign
happiness, they are most likely to find something that gives them immediate
gratification. One of those things can be an affair.
Second, once you see that you're unhappy, you must express it in
some way. The effort you apply to saving your marriage must be equal to
the happiness you would feel if you and your spouse were in a happy
marriage and your children were able to benefit from your mutual love. If
there is any chance that you could be happy, even if working it out will
require shameful sharing and embarrassing revelations about your true
feelings, you are far better off if things work out.
Third, if your efforts to express your discontent fall on deaf ears, or if
you think you need the help of a professional, of course you need to go to
counseling. Everyone is uncomfortable with airing their dirty laundry with a
stranger. But therapists are trained to be neutral, understanding, and to see
problems in communication as well as unconscious unmet needs, and they
tend to connect even the most bewildering human foibles to a person's
vulnerability. Therapists generally prefer to see people as human rather than
bad. If even your worst traits can be understood in the marital context, and
you can improve your communication with your spouse, maybe things can
be good. Maybe things aren't quite as bad as you think.
Fourth, and finally, make sure you are being honest with yourself about
what it would be like to be divorced. It is so easy to see only the virtues of
change without seriously considering the ensuing sorrow that such a change
would create. Some of the negatives have been laid out above, but more
explanation regarding the effects of divorce on children should be detailed.
As everyone knows, it is often said about children that they are amazingly
resilient. Resiliency, however, really only means that children manage to
keep on going in their lives. The impact of experience in childhood is the
regular purview of everyday psychotherapy. We're all impacted by
everything that happens to us, and the terrible things stay with us forever.
You need to know that in most cases, children feel like the divorce of their
parents rips them in two. When a marriage is so bad that parents spend all
their time arguing, or worse, kids can be so damaged by the marriage that a
divorce brings relief. But improvement in a marriage can be so curative in
demonstrating the importance of the family that it can undo much of the
damage that's been previously done. The tear that rips through children of
divorce leaves them unable to trust their parents, and thus, unable to trust
anyone else. That lack of trust makes it nearly impossible to get truly close
to anyone again.
If divorce is necessary, don't have an affair. Most of the affairs people
have are merely an instrument of divorce and leave the whole family bereft
of the family feeling all should enjoy. You owe it to yourself and your
family to try hard to save your marriage. People seldom stay in love with
the object of an affair. When people are extricated from their marriage, they
typically start to see their new partner in a more accurate way, and then
become disenchanted with them, just as they had with their spouse. It is
also important to realize that, even though people rarely start to think they
made a mistake in divorcing, if they never really tried to work things out,
their thinking is clearly suspect. They typically fall into the same problems in
their next relationship because they have never worked out the kinds of
problems they themselves create within a relationship. In those cases where
a divorce actually is the best possible outcome, if you have really tried
everything you could to save the family before divorcing, the efforts to save
the marriage itself can make for a healthier divorce in which everyone gets
along after the divorce is final. The only possible saving grace after divorce
is when the children see their parents work as a team motivated by their
common love for their children. Only in that context can they understand
that they are important enough to both their parents that their parents will
share their love of their children with each other even after divorce. That
love can start the healing that lets children trust again.