WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE AFFAIRS?

The other day on Facebook I put out a message about people who have an affair within their marriage.  People’s perception was that I felt “angry” and it related to something personal. 

 

As a Life Coach I constantly repeat that “love is all there is” just like the Beatles song and if you love someone, you don’t lie, cheat or act deceitful.  That certainly is not love.

 

I have spoken to many people having affairs, had affairs, want an affair and it’s all spoken light heartedly, but they don’t think through the consequence of their actions and how entangled everything becomes!  The end of a marriage is not pleasant and divorce is something I certainly wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy!

 

Ann threw her husband out when she discovered he was having an affair.    She still feels she’s picking up the pieces a year later.  She worries about her children and as she came from a broken home, wished to give them what she didn’t have.  She feels she stands out like a sore thumb but feels lucky to have such supportive friends yet sometimes feels a bit like a “third wheel”. 

 

Because of the children, erasing her ex from her life has never been an option – and she wishes it was – but feels sure that having to work through their issues, rather than running away from one another, is more emotionally healthy in the long run.  She felt the legal process – the nastiness and financial wrangling – was the worst thing she has ever experienced. 

 

Demi Moore ended her marriage to Ashton Kutcher after 6 years of marriage, following allegations that he had been cheating on her.  Each time Demi hears about Ashton and his new woman it breaks her heart....  it’s like a knife in her heart. 

 

Shania Twain found out her husband was having an affair with her best friend. She has said “I really lost my sense of trust, compassion and honesty.  I crashed down  and became what I consider  an emotional mess.  I’ve never been so miserable in my whole life.  I just wanted to go to bed and never get up”.

 

So why do people cheat on their partners?

A common reason is lack of sexual satisfaction in their relationship.

Another reason is a secret desire for additional sexual encounters.

Also, lack of emotional satisfaction in their relationship, because they felt they were lacking a connection to their partner.Bottom of Form

 

Wishing to feel appreciated.

Falling out of love with their partner.

In a study very few people indicated that they had fallen head over heels for the person with whom they had the affair. Again, emotional intimacy plus sexual closeness seems to be a more important factor that leads partners to stray.

Another reason is wishing to seek revenge and hurt a partner who is (or was having an affair).

Curiosity and wanting new experiences, was another reason. The allure of someone and something new led some people to choose this particular form of challenge.

Extramarital affairs clearly represent a complex mix of desire, anguish, and need for connection. Rarely are they apparently entered into without conflict or even distress. They may be the product of, or the cause of, the ending of a marital relationship.

So can the relationship be saved if someone feels “lacking of their needs”? 

In the book “Getting The Love You Want” by Harville Hendrix, he says

“... that unless people understand the unconscious desires that motivated their dysfunctional behaviour in the first marriage and learn how to satisfy those desires with the new partner, the second marriage is destined to run aground on the same submerged rocks.  The feeling of growth and change between marriages is an illusion: it is merely the pain that comes from exchanging one set of habituated behaviours for another. 

I believe that couples should make very effort to honour their wedding vows to stay together “till death do us part” – not for moral reasons, but for psychological ones.”

I totally agree.