Infidelity is the most frequent reason couples seek professional help. When a partner chooses to be unfaithful, his or her partner loses trust, is deeply wounded, and is uncertain about the future of the relationship.

Most couples begin their committed relationship with promises of sexual and emotional loyalty. Yet, as the numbers verify, fifty percent of both men and women are now straying from those once sacred vows.

Partners break that most crucial trust agreement for many reasons. People, situations, challenges, and unexpected experiences are different each time. Most of these people did not enter their relationships with the intent of cheating. The majority of them feel terrible about giving up their personal integrity and hurting the one they have loved the most, yet personal factors took them down that road.


Affairs are most often secretive and separate relationships that take time, energy, and loyalty away from the primary relationship. When an ongoing relationship is struggling, the magnetic pull of novelty and new romance can be very tempting. The established partnership may be unable to compete with the naughtiness, excitement, and lust of a clandestine tryst.

With so much at stake, it would seem perilous for people to risk their primary relationships and personal integrity by choosing infidelity. They have to choose deceit, live a double life, and risk the negative judgment of people who matter. And most are not proud of what they've done. Why then do partners stray so often?


Some individuals have always lived their lives in separate compartments. Perhaps they made their commitments to change that style in their primary relationship, but then returned to their old habits. Affairs require that room for them has already been created before they happen. Partners considering an affair have usually already begun keeping information and activities separate so that the space that makes infidelity possible has already been created.

Others find themselves entangled in a diminished, hopeless relationship they did not consciously intend, but now live within. They do not feel they can leave, but cannot live with the ways things are, and don't see any other options. Finding satisfaction elsewhere is their solution.

Still others, suffering years of abuse, neglect, or conflict, experience a clandestine relationship as a haven from failure, and use it to heal long-standing wounds in their primary relationship. Many times those relationships start as a rescuing friendship that transforms over time into intimacy.
 
Some, of course, just like multiple partners but don't want to give up the security and comfort of their primary relationship. Those people are usually sequential infidels, adept at the process and rarely caught. Many fall into a relationship with someone they have known for a long time. If their primary relationship is under stress, temporarily unsatisfying, or unavailable, the alternate relationship takes on an attraction that becomes sexually magnetic.


As time goes by, infidelity becomes harder to deny. The unusual behaviors escalate; unexplained absences, hidden telephone or credit card bills, intensified irritability, sudden needs to get away for a few minutes on a seemingly unnecessary errand, and phone calls that come at odd hours with no one on the other end. Their clandestine lovers may begin putting pressure on them to be more available.

As the partners' suspicions increase, they will usually start asking questions. Radar blips have begun going off everywhere, and friends, encouraged by the growing awareness, provide actual confirmation. The deceived partners who have ignored warning signals now feel humiliated.
 
The adulterous partner's first responses to the growing inquiries are often irritation, excuses, and reverse blaming or invalidation. If they feel any guilt, it is usually expressed as outrage. "How could you possibly think I would do something like that?" Or, "Why wouldn't I be staying away more. This relationship is totally unsatisfying." Sometimes even, "You're completely off your rocker. What are you smoking? Maybe you need to get a life." Or the very occasional, "Thank God you finally know. This situation has been killing me." The affair is the first betrayal; the denial to the partner is the second.


There are people who believe that infidelity under any circumstances is not a viable option. Whether it is a personal code of honor, deep love for the other, or the unwillingness to subject themselves to the discomfort of living a double life, they choose to remain faithful to their partners.

I treated a young man in his late twenties who was one of those people. Caleb and Mary Margaret were devout Catholics who married when they were both in their early twenties. They had four daughters in six years and lived in devotion to each other, their family, and their religious beliefs.

She came out the back door of a shopping mall just after closing time on Christmas Eve and did not see the man behind her, or feel the impact of the blow. Though emergency personnel were there in just a few minutes, she never regained consciousness. There was no way she could have avoided the attack. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Every day since the attack, Caleb visited her in the hospital, fixated on the monitor that displayed the lack of brain activity. Overwrought and exhausted from working two jobs and raising four little girls, he ached for the support and warmth he had lost.

After a year had passed, and there was no hope of her recovery, Caleb fell into a deep depression. Those who knew him encouraged him to find a new partner to help raise his young girls, but he was resolute in his devotion to his wife. Though he knew in his heart she would never be whole again, he gazed daily into her vacant eyes, searching for the soul he once held beloved. She survived for four years, and he never wavered from that commitment.

Caleb came to me two years into his vigil. He needed help in maintaining maintain his faith through the loneliness of his solitude and to help his children prepare for the death that would come. When Mary Margaret died in his arms, I was in the waiting room with his two older girls, standing by to help the family process their grief. Never did he regret his years of devotion, or the sacrifices he had made in his personal life to stay faithful to her.

Though the tragic quality of Caleb's sacrifice is one that most people never have to face, many others share his commitment to fidelity. Not all partners can resist the temptations that may occur when their relationship is strained or when they rationalize to themselves that a specific situation warrants the breaking of trust.

Whether that particular relationship is amenable to healing depends on many factors, and the answers to the following questions can help the partners get a better grasp on what they may need to do to begin that process.

• Is the unfaithful partner blaming the other partner for the affair?

• Did the couple have a quality relationship before the affair?

• How long has the couple been together?

• Did either of them have prior affairs in this or past relationships?

• Did they really love and trust each other before this happened?·

• What kinds of childhood experiences are being relived because of the affair?

• Did the person who was unfaithful want out, anyway, and has picked this way of making it happen?

• Who is the other lover and what was he or she told of the existence of the committed relationship?

• Will the other lover want retribution if he or she has been dropped?

• Is this the first time this has happened in this relationship?

• Is the other lover a friend of the couple?

• Was it a one-night stand or a long-term love affair?

• Did the affair happen during a time of relationship stress?

• Is the person having the affair remorseful or self-justifying?

• Would he or she really be happier with this new person, rather than trying to fix the relationship?

• Was anything going on in the established relationship that fueled the reasons for deceit?

• What does the betrayed partner want now?

• Is there enough energy in the relationship for healing?

• Do both partners want the relationship to survive?

• Does the guilty partner realize the severity of what he or she has done and willing to do what is necessary to gain forgiveness?

• Does the injured partner have enough love left to get past blame and punishment?

None of the answers to these questions is meant to justify betrayal or to suggest that this breach of trust is easily repaired. But they are important variables that help determine if the relationship has any chance to recover.


There are many possible outcomes once an affair has been discovered: permanent separation, a guarded promise of better behavior in the future, genuine revelation of what caused the affair and a new kind of possibility as a result of it. If the couple decides to stay together, how they create future trust will depend on the humility of the person who strayed, and the ability of the partner to forgive and move on. A first-time affair will have a better chance of being healed if the straying partner really cares about his or lover, and feels badly about what has happened. A casual affair, rationalized by personal hunger and need, that invalidates the trust of the relationship, and has no concomitant remorse, doesn't bode well for the future.

The responses of the partner who has been deceived play a large part in the outcome. Some are more lenient about infidelities because their culture accepts them as a way of life. Others can bear physical infidelity if the external relationship was not about love. I've observed some relationships that have so much else going for them that the partners aren't willing to give each other up even when someone else remains in the picture. In some rarer cases, the affair is a "wake-up call" that spurs the couple to a re-evaluation of their relationship and eventually to a renewed commitment.

Some partners actually allow occasional infidelity as an accepted part of their relationship, but insist that honesty be the primary value, and no threats to the committed relationship are allowed. They both live by the same maxim, "I don't care what you do, just let me know what's going on, don't fall in love, and don't bring home any diseases."


Unfortunately, of the literally hundreds of patients I have worked with whose lives have been disrupted by affairs, I have seen many relationships survive but very few thrive. The primary relationship is irrevocably altered and essentially over as it was. Something too important has happened, and the scars can persist for many years, even when the partners enter into an active process of healing.

It takes a long time, a very determined and sincerely remorseful person, and a forgiving partner, to help resolve an infidelity. The process is slow and often hindered by the injured partner's angry accusations and painful recollections, and the straying partner's inability to maintain caring under the barrage of rage. Getting to the other side of an affair with hope and commitment for a better relationship is often much easier with a competent professional on your side.