Nearly four years ago Linda Shafer, divorced and living alone with her dog in Oklahoma City, logged onto her computer after a long day of social work and entered the world of Internet chat rooms. One man sparked her interest. They started a private conversation.
“This wasn’t the usual ‘how much do you weigh’ or ‘what color is your hair?’ “ says Shafer, a social worker with the federal government. “This was different.”
As it turned out, he lived close by. After a few weeks of intense, personal dialogue, he suggested they meet for lunch. He was married with children.
“This was the stupid part,” says Shafer, her voice soft, kind, a voice that troubled families--her clients--can trust. “I thought it would be harmless just to meet a married man for lunch. Well, I met him.”
Shafer didn’t know it at the time, but she had already entered stage three of an extramarital affair that would last 3 1/2 years, bringing her moments of bliss, hours of sorrow.
Nearly all affairs--yes, even yours--follow very specific patterns. They generally fall into four stages, according to several family researchers. Stage One: You develop a close emotional bond. This is the talking stage. For Shafer, it occurred on the Internet. For others, it happens at work or in the neighborhood. You get to know each other, about each other. There’s a spark.
Stage Two: You keep it a secret. You don’t tell your spouse or your friends that you are attracted emotionally to this person. “You know you’re in deep when you decide to keep the relationship secret,” says Florida psychologist Debbie Layton-Tholl. “Fantasy and secrets are very powerful. They fuel the fire.”
Stage Three: You have lunch, play tennis. This is the dating phase, though you might not know it. You start seeing each other, doing things together. You might tell yourself this is just a colleague, just a friend.
Stage Four: Well. You know.
At that point you are engaged in an intense sexual and emotional liaison. Sometimes extramarital affairs lead to new marriages. Other times, they are roller-coaster relationships that last only months, or a few years. And then there are affairs that become lifelong relationships. Think of CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt, whose 30-year romance was exposed posthumously, shocking fans of his television program, “Sunday Morning.”
According to researchers and eyewitnesses, thousands of people have life-changing affairs and use nearly identical language to describe the passion, betrayal and pain associated with them. “No one ever made me feel like that before.” “I wanted to kill myself.” “If I had to choose one person to live with me on a deserted island, it would be him.” Or “her.”
Family therapists and affair survivors--or casualties, depending on how the affair turns out--urge people to acknowledge the prevalence of affairs and to start talking openly about them. Only such honesty, they believe, will help illuminate the psychodynamics of these relationships and help people understand--and perhaps avoid--the pain that they can cause.
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Now what?
Researchers and affair survivors urge you to seek help and confront the different issues that may have propelled you or your spouse into an affair.
Don't expect an easy mend.
Affairs often reflect deeper issues - in the individual and the marital relationship--that have set the stage for infidelity. Baltimore psychologist Shirley Glass and author Peggy Vaughan suggest that people explore these areas:
* What does the affair say about the individual?
Explore the personal issues, whether it be a feeling of entitlement, low self-esteem, hypersexuality or mid-life crises in which you question everything about your life--your work, your marriage, your place in the community. There may even be a family history of infidelity where having an affair is a "learned behavior" and is implicitly condoned or encouraged.
For many people, the affair is a life-changing event. It often prompts a thorough self-examination and can lead to a complete redirection of a person's life. Some people finally "grow up" in the wake of an affair. Others say the pain and loss experienced by infidelity forced them to look for a spiritual demension to their lives beyond relationships.
The spouse who has been betrayed also has to do some self-examination. Did you suspect the affair was going on? What about your self-esteem? Your sense of entitlement to a faithful partner? Your sexual needs? Your family history? Life is not the same for you, either.
* What does the affair say about the relationship?
What is going on--or not going on in your marriage? Relationships are dynamic and mysterious and there is no one definition of a marriage that works and endures. But infidelity is a clue that something is amiss in the marriage. Marital conflict may be the triggering event for one or both spouses to get involved with other people.
"Often problems in the marriage provide you with a vulnerability for affairs, but relationship problems alone are not the only cause," says Glass. "After all, a lot of people unhappily married do not have affairs."
Usually, therapists say, it is a combination of factors that culminate in an affair. While the driving motivation may be rooted in the psychological needs of the individual, "falling in love" outside the bounds of marriage involves a myriad set of circumstances that aren't easily explained--except in hindsight.
To read the rest of this article go to this page at the Washington Post.
