Can having an affair help your marriage?
by Mira and Charles on March 9th, 2010More reasons why cheating is a bad idea
A journalist for a major woman’s magazine just asked us about whether having an affair can help your relationship. Here are her questions and our answers.
Q: How do you think affairs can help relationships, and under what circumstances?
Mira: OK, we need to get some things straight here. First of all, if you want to help your relationship, do NOT have an affair. Affairs damage trust and that connection that says “we are special to each other.” Now this damage can be repaired, but it takes a lot of work, and some people just can’t forgive and forget. This damage is huge and the risks are just too great.
Now, having said that, affairs can be helpful. They can wake a couple up to the fact that things have drifted from bad to worse, from distance to a
And let’s not forget that in many cases an affair can be helpful because it shows someone that the grass is not greener on the other side. Sometimes it is just something that someone needs to get out of their system. Sometimes it shows that a need is real, and then people bring that need back to the relationship.
Q: Does it matter if the affair is purely sexual or purely emotional?
Mira: There are many kinds of affairs, depending on the primary need the affair meets. The fact that there is sex doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a sexual affair. What matters is, What would I miss most if this affair ended? The answer to that question is the reason for the affair.
Q: Do you think that women find certain circumstances easier to forgive than men?
Mira: There is NO good data that show any big difference between men and women in terms of what circumstances make a difference to them. The myth is that men find sexual affairs harder to take and women find emotional affairs harder to take. But this misses the mark by far. The truth is that almost everyone is devastated if they find their partner has cheated. The biggest factors in whether forgiveness is possible is getting professional help, the spouse having a talent for forgiveness, and the cheater having a talent for earning forgiveness.
Q: Do you think that monogamy is still an attainable ideal, or should we be a bit more ‘realistic’ and incorporate affairs into our idea of a happy marriage?
Mira: I know there are people who practice open marriage, but I have never seen a case where this works out long term. Either grievances start entering in or one spouse was never fully on board from the beginning. Monogamy is hard but it is totally attainable. To paraphrase what Churchill said about democracy, monogamy is the worst way to have a long-term relationship, except for all the others.
Q: How do you get past an affair and through to the healing?
Mira: This is such a huge question, I’ll give a short answer. To get past an affair, you need professional help. An affair is the heart attack of relationships, and who would cope with a heart attack without a cardiologist? As part of this professional help, you need to learn to really hear and understand and learn from how hurt the cheated-on partner was. Once that has happened, the couple needs to look at real problems in their relationship and begin to fix them. And finally, trust has to be rebuilt. All these take time and guidance.
Countless people have found our When Good People Have Affairs to be the best book for understanding affairs and figuring out what to do next. You’ll find that there are 17 reasons why people have affairs. Check it out.
If you need help with the impact of an affair on your life or your marriage, we here at The Chestnut Hill Institute can help.
