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Q: What do people seek in an affair partner?

Dr. G. Either we choose somebody very different from our partner, or we choose somebody like our partner used to be, a younger version. A woman married to a really sweet guy who helps with the dishes, who is very nurturing and very secure, may at some point see him as boring and get interested in the high-achieving, high-energy man who may even be a bit chauvinistic. But if she’s married to the man with the power and the status, then she’s interested in the guy who is sensitive and touchy-feely, who may not be as ambitious.

Q: Is this just the nature of attraction?

Dr. G. It has to do with the fact that people really want it all. Probably the only way to get it all is to be in more than one relationship at the same time. We have different parts of ourselves.

The other flip-flop in choice of affair partner reflects the fact that the marriage often represents a healing of our family wounds. Somebody who lacked a secure attachment figure in their family of origin chooses a mate who provides security and stability. It’s a healthy, resilient part of ourselves that seeks that balancing.

But after we’ve mastered that, we often want to go back and find somebody like that difficult parent and make that person love us. There is a correlation between the nature of the attachment figure and the affair partner; the person is trying to master incomplete business from childhood. As a result, some people will choose an affair partner who is difficult, temperamental, or unpredictable. Under those circumstances, the unfaithful partner is often caught in a triangle.

Q: What do you mean?

Dr. G. The person maintains the marriage, and can’t leave it, and maintains the affair, and can’t leave that either. Tension arises when either the affair partner or spouse applies pressure on them to get off the fence. The spouse gives them security and a sense of family. The affair partner provides excitement and passion. When the involved spouse says “I don’t know which person to be with,” what they really want is to keep both.

Q: The challenge becomes, how, with busy lives, do people satisfy all of their needs within the marriage?

Dr. G. It is a false belief that if I’m incomplete, I have to be completed by another person. You have to do it through your own life, your own work, for your own pleasure, through individual growth. The more fulfilled you are, in terms of things that you do separately that please you, the more individuated and more whole you are--and the more intimate you can be. Then you’re not expecting the other person to make you happy. You’re expecting the other person to share happiness with you, to join you in your happiness.

Q: Are more couples trying to survive affairs these days?

Dr. G. People are more willing to work through them. There is not the same kind of bitter resolution that people may have had in the past, when women would stay with an unfaithful husband because they had no place else to go. Staying together was more out of weakness; the marriage didn’t improve. Now people are saying, I’m willing to work this through, but we have to solve whatever problems we have, we have to get something out of this; our marriage has to be even better than it was before.

Q: Are men and women equally part of this willingness?

Dr. G. More men are calling to come in for therapy. That’s a very positive sign. The downside is, it’s often too late. By the time men are alarmed, the woman is too distanced from the marriage.

Q: What other changes do you see in affairs these days?

Dr. G. Cyber affairs are new. For some people the computer itself is very addictive. They get very caught up in it. It’s hiding out, escaping. And an affair is an escape--from the realities of everyday life. These two escapes are now paired.

The other danger online is that people can disguise who they are. Think of the roles you can take on if you hide behind a computer screen. More so than in workplace affairs, you can project anything onto the other person.

At the computer, with a screen in front of you; you can act out any fantasy you want. You can make this other person become anybody you want them to be. There’s a loosening up, because you’re not face to face with the person; the relationship begins in anonymity. Sometimes people send nude pictures back and forth.

Q: This attracts only a certain kind of person, doesn’t it?

Dr. G. We don’t know yet. Among the e-mail questions that I get are always a number from people who are concerned because their partner is having an online relationship with somebody. Or their partner had an affair with somebody they met online. It’s very prevalent, and it’s very dangerous.

If you’re talking to somebody on the computer, and you begin to talk about your sexual fantasies, and you’re not talking to your partner about your sexual fantasies, which relationship now has more sexual chemistry? Which relationship has more emotional intimacy? Then your partner walks in the room and you switch screens. Now you’ve got a wall of secrecy. It has all the components of an affair. And it’s very easy.

Technology has impacted affairs in another way, too. Many people have discovered their partner’s affair by getting the cellular phone bill, or by getting in the car and pushing redial on the car phone, or by taking their partner’s beeper and seeing who’s been calling. We’re leaving a whole new electronic trail.

Q: Has that changed the dynamics or the psychology of affairs in any way?

Dr. G. In the past, when someone was suspicious they could ask their partner: "Are you involved with somebody else?" Or "what’s going on? You seem distant lately." If the partner denied there was anything wrong, there wasn’t a whole lot somebody could do. Now there’s tangible evidence people can utilize to find out if their hunches are indeed true.

Q: There is a public conception of affairs as very glamorous, but as I’m hearing you tell it, the aftermath of affairs is pretty messy. How do we square these views?

Dr. G. They’re both true. In those captured moments, there is passion and romance. We’re in Stage One of relationship formation--idealizing the partner. Stage One can go on for years, as long as there’s a forbidden aspect. The admiration and positive mirroring can go on for a long time--until you get to a reality-based relationship. Which is why so many affairs end after the person leaves the marriage.

Q: How many affairs survive as enduring relationships?

Dr. G. Only 10 percent of people who leave their relationship for affairs end up with the affair partner. Once you can be with the person every day, and deal with all the little irritations in a relationship that make it less romantic, you’re into Stage Two--disillusionment.

Several people have told me they wish the affair had never happened; they wish they had worked on their marriage instead. Once they got into an affair, it was too compelling. But now that the affair has settled into a reality based relationship, it is too late to go back to the marriage; they destroyed too much.

Q: How do most affairs get exposed or uncovered?

Dr. G. Sometimes the betrayed partner will just ask, "are you involved with somebody else?" Sometimes the affair partner, when it’s a women, does something to inform the wife--she sends a letter or a copy of an explicit greeting card, or calls, or even shows up on the doorstep. She asks, "do you know where your husband’s been?" Her motivation is not to be helpful but to break up the marriage. But often she’s the one that then gets left out.

Sometimes people find out in horrible ways. They read about it in the newspaper or they get a sexually transmitted disease. Or the cell phone bill arrives. Or their partner gets arrested--if there is a sexual addiction, the partner may be caught with prostitutes. Sometimes somebody is suspicious and checks it out, by going to the hotel room to see whether their partner’s alone or by hiring detectives.

Q: Things must be at a pretty pass to bring in private detectives.

Dr. G. A newspaper article reported that when detectives were sent out to investigate an affair, the suspicions were founded in 95 percent of cases. When somebody gets to the point of hiring a detective, they’re usually right. Obviously if you have to hire a detective, rebuilding trust is going to be much more difficult than when you ask and a partner admits to an affair.

Q: Can all relationships be fixed after an affair?

Dr. G. No. What I look for is how the unfaithful partner shows empathy for the pain that they have caused when the betrayed spouse starts acting crazy.

Q: In what way do they act crazy?

Dr. G. They’re very emotional. They cry easily, their emotions flip-flop. They are hypervigilant. They want to look at the beeper. They have flashbacks. In the car they hear a country-western song and start crying, or accusing. They obsess over the details of the affair. Although these are common posttraumatic reactions to infidelity, their behavior is very erratic and upsetting to them and their partner. How much compassion the partner has for that is one of the benchmarks.

Another sign of salvageability lies in how much responsibility the unfaithful partner is willing to take for the choice they made, regardless of problems that pre-existed in the marriage. (We definitely need to work on the weaknesses of the marriage, but not to justify the affair.) If the unfaithful partner says, "you made me do it," that’s not as predictive of a good outcome as when the partner says, "we should have gone to counseling before this happened to deal with the problems." Sometimes the unfaithful partner really doesn’t regret the affair, because it was very exciting.

One of the big strains between the partners in the primary relationship is the way they perceive the affair partner.

Q: How so?

Dr. G. A lot of the anger and the rage the betrayed spouse feels is directed toward the affair partner rather than the marital partner: "that person doesn’t have any morals;" "that person was exploitative." "That person’s a home wrecker." To believe that of the marital partner would make it difficult to stay in the relationship.

At the same time, the person who had the affair may still be idealizing the affair partner. The unfaithful spouse perceives the affair partner as an angel, whereas the betrayed person perceives an evil person.

It’s important at some point in the healing process for the involved person to see some flaws in the affair partner, so that they can partly see what their partner, the betrayed spouse, is telling them. But it’s also important for the betrayed spouse to see the affair partner not as a cardboard character but as a human being who did some caring things.

Continued >

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