How familiar does this look?
It is one of 7 types of affairs described in an ebook.
#1: My Marriage Made Me Do It
Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may hear something like this: "I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is dead. There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone. We've grown apart. I can't stand the marriage. There was nothing happening in the marriage and the affair just happened."
Key Points
1. It's as if a marriage is an animal gone bad. A marriage does not have a life of it's own. In reality, there is no such thing as a "marriage." One is "married" as a result of making some promises and signing a paper.
2.
After the paper is signed, two people continue communicating and acting toward each other in particular ways that they hope will help them get what they individually want.
Just as there is no "marriage," there is no such thing as a "relationship." There are, however, ways of relating for which each person is responsible. Remember the comedian Flip Wilson (that dates me) and his "The devil made me do it" skit?
2. We idealize "marriage" or "romantic relationships" with the expectation that we will get what we want, and without much effort. The movies, popular public press and romance novels/stories don't help much here. A "marriage" is behind the eight ball from the word go. "IT" can't win.
3. From day one most of us don't have a clue about how to get, build, nurture and maintain healthy and intimate ways of relating. We need 'love 101' and it's not there. We rely upon experimentation or bad models.
4. If the "marriage" is dead, why in the world would one choose to have an affair? Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It really is stupid. You add a whole layer of deceit and shame that eventually will result in consequences more dire than approaching your spouse and saying, "I'm really unhappy. What I'm doing with you obviously is not working. I want out." Oh well, maybe some people need more problems and suffering.
5. If the "marriage" is bad, obviously, I don't have to look at me. I can blame "it" on the other. Some of us find it difficult to look at me. Some of us don't know how to look at me. Some of us never think of looking at me.
Tip: If your partner/spouse is having an affair and blames it on the" marriage," don't buy into it. The "marriage" is not the problem. You are not the problem. Your spouse/partner chose the affair out of ignorance, fear or inadequacy.
Characteristics of the person who says that a bad marriage made me do it
• At one time was clingy and fairly passive in the marriage
• Does not want to take responsibility for his/her behavior
•
Attaches self to others. Others become the guiding star
• May have bouts of sadness and dejection
• Deep down thinks of self as inadequate and weak Reluctant and seemingly incapable of expressing own desires wants, needs, ideas (doesn't know what they are)
• Can be very generous and has difficulty saying no
• May be naive or Polly Anna like
• More passive, does not like competition
• May be closely attached to parents
• May be overprotected by parents
• May typically express put-downs about self
• Complains. Whines. Things are never right or good enough
• Those who know him/her well will usually be exasperated and frustrated
What can I expect will happen?
1. Expect that your spouse will have a very powerful attachment to the other person. The other person will consistently be on her mind. Your spouse will shift energy away from you, the children, the household and her career to her affair relationship. She will be focused, but not on you.
Your spouse will attempt to push you away by avoiding you, ignoring you, closing off communication or walking away.
2. The affair will most likely be a long-term affair. It will be very difficult for your spouse to walk away from the other person. He may try on a number of occasions but will continue to gravitate back to the other person. He will hold on tenaciously.
This is probably the first or only affair for your spouse. Your spouse is not interested in playing or fooling around but powerfully attaching to the other person. The other person is the savior!
3. Don't believe that the affair was planned before hand because of a bad
marriage. These affairs usually just happen. They usually happen with someone in close proximity: co-worker, neighbor, friend (frequently of friends with whom you socialize), etc.
The other person is usually the aggressor, your spouse lacking the confidence to seek out the affair. The rationale that it happened because of a lousy marriage comes after the affair is in bloom.
4. The more you try to persuade, convince or pursue, the more strongly he will attach to the other person. He will perceive your efforts as weakness and will want to attach more intently to the other person whom he (at perhaps an unconscious level) deems to be the powerful and loving answer-to-all.
5. Efforts to use moral or religious arguments to call a halt to the affair will be strongly resisted. Your spouse is not guided by rightness or wrongness. These standards have not been internalized and do not carry much weight, especially when it comes to the important chunks of her life. The actions and thoughts of your spouse primarily originate from her need to attach to another person. Any behavior or concept that serves the purpose of maintaining the attachment will be valued. Others are discarded.
6. Expect you will spend a significant amount of time and emotional energy in the next 2 to 4 years (especially if there are children) attempting to resolve the relationship. By resolve, I mean, coming to a point where each of you are fairly free of the emotional entanglement that holds you together and generates the pain and fear. It will be important for you to resolve the relationship whether you continue to be married or separate and divorce. Again, if children are present, it is vital, let me repeat, vital, that you and your spouse or ex-spouse come to a working relationship freer of emotional baggage and game playing.
Will they live happily ever after?
This scenario is based on the premise that you, your partner and the other person will continue with the same behavioral and emotional patterns that you are employing and do not consciously make changes in how you think or what you do. (If you begin to change, you may upset the apple cart. But, more on that later.)
This kind of affair often ends in your divorce with your spouse continuing the affair and frequently marrying the other person. Eventually that relationship will recycle through the dynamics listed above.
The affair relationship will run a predictable course. Most likely, a very similar dynamic was at play in the beginning of your relationship with your spouse. She
leaned on you, perhaps clutched tightly.
You carried the strength, the lead. She adored and worshiped you and guided her life by your every action.
As the relationship developed, she began to perceive your strength as stifling control. Her negative behavior became more and more pronounced.
Her reactivity and increased devaluation of your strength became puzzling. You really hadn't changed. You still continued to be the same person with the same strengths and cared for her, provided stability for her and assumed that same old role with your dogged persistence.
The emotional and physical distance between the two of you increased. This did not happen suddenly but developed over the course of years.
The affair relationship will most likely follow the same course. So, months or perhaps years down the road, your spouse will experience the same impasse with the other person as he did with you.
If he (or the other person) chooses not to intentionally reflect on his marriage and the new relationship; if he chooses to forgo therapy or some other formal educative process, it's almost as predictable as paying taxes that he (they) will recycle the same issues.
Wish them well!
