The Many Faces of Infidelity: Exploring the Causes and Treatment of Extramarital Relationships 2 CE Hours

The Many Faces of Infidelity: Exploring the Causes and Treatment of Extramarital Relationships 2 CE hours

Learning objectives • List the factors associated with an increased risk of infidelity. • Identify individual characteristics that may play a role in the increased likelihood of engaging in an affair. • Define extramarital affairs. • List the five different types of affairs. • Identify the myths surrounding affairs. • Compare and contrast the central arguments between the moral view of affairs and the function of an affair from a relational perspective. • Identify the considerations that all clinicians should understand before working with a couple who has experienced an affair. • Explain the three stages of treating an affair. • List the six stages of recovery for the spouse of the sexual addict. • Define the “split self” and the split-self affair. • Outline the basic stages of treating the split-self affair. • Identify reasons why cyber-infidelity is an easy situation for some people to engage in.

Introduction and case examples Julie and Craig Julie and Craig were everyone’s idea of the perfect couple: their friends envied their relationship and their comfortable lifestyle. They had two athletic, smart, and attractive young children. Julie and Craig had been married for twelve years. Julie had recently been consumed with taking care of her mother who had been suffering from cancer. During this time, Craig felt quite distant from her; however, he didn’t really know how to discuss this with Julie. Craig eventually ended up having an affair with a woman from work. Craig confessed the affair to Julie after he could no longer live with his guilt.

Julie now feels old, undesirable, angry, and unloved. She tells her friend that she does not believe her marriage can survive this affair. Craig has a hard time explaining why he did what he did: he admits that Julie is more attractive than the other woman is and his sexual relationship with Julie is better than what he had in the affair. Craig is begging for forgiveness and promising Julie he will never do something like this again. Julie is not sure if she is even willing to go to couples counseling with Craig.

Michael and Monica Michael and Monica have been married for fifteen years. During their marriage, Michael has had multiple affairs. Monica has been suspicious at different times, but Michael always denies it when she questions him. Monica ends up believing his excuses.

Michael estimates he has had at least fifteen affairs during the marriage. Michael has had short- term affairs that have lasted a few weeks, as well as several one-night stands. He justifies his behavior as acceptable because he does not get emotionally involved with any of the women and he still loves Monica.

Michael recently found himself in a situation that he cannot lie his way out of. A woman with whom he had a brief relationship has told him that she is pregnant and that he is the father. Michael knows it is only a matter of time before Monica finds out the truth. He does not know how she will react; he is panicking about the situation. He is terrified that she will discover how many affairs he has had over the years. Despite his worries, Michael recently had another one- night stand, and feels that his behaviors have become beyond his control. Michael also views pornography for several hours each week and visits prostitutes on occasion.

Celeste and Ron Celeste has been married to Ron for five years. Celeste became close friends with a man who volunteered at the homeless shelter where Celeste works as a case manager. At first, Celeste found herself interested in this man, Dave, just as a friend. He seemed so willing to listen to her

struggles at work; he was very kind and compassionate. Celeste often found herself comparing him to her husband.

Over the course of several months, Celeste began to realize that she was falling in love with Dave. They began having lunch together regularly and texting each other multiple times per day. She and Dave never had a physical relationship, so Celeste did not feel as if she had been having an affair. Dave’s girlfriend, Donna, did not perceive the relationship with the same point of view as Celeste. Donna became very jealous of Celeste and Dave. Donna read the text messages sent by Dave to Celeste, and then called Celeste to tell her to stay away from him.

Celeste now feels torn and believes that she is in love with Dave and wants to divorce her husband to be with Dave.

Most people (80 percent or more) assume that they will have a traditional, monogamous marriage (McCarthy, 2012). Additionally, most couples do not regularly engage in explicit discussions about extra-marital affairs (EMA). They also mistakenly believe that EMA occurs after 10 to 20 years of marriage and that the prime cause is sexual boredom.

The reality is that 35 to 45 percent of marriages involve a sexual or an emotional EMA. Other research has estimated roughly 30 to 60 percent of all married individuals in the United States will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage (Jahan et al., 2017).

These are most likely to occur in the first five years of the marriage, especially in the first two years. Sexual boredom is rarely a prime cause.

Extramarital affairs, whatever their cause or outcome, fascinate the American public. Politicians who are caught engaging in affairs receive tremendous publicity and speculation, including the scandals of Bill Clinton and Prince Charles. Former presidential candidate John Edwards, Eliott Spitzer, the former Governor of New York, and Anthony Weiner, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, all had their political careers damaged by sexual scandals.

Celebrities such as Tiger Woods have also been shamed publicly and have had contracts for product endorsements pulled due an unfavorable public image that resulted from extra-marital affairs. Certainly, the affairs of those in the public eye provide an opportunity to dissect the possible causes, as well as the outcomes.

For every politician or athlete, however, there are hundreds of ordinary people who have affairs. These affairs may or may not be known to others, but come with no less serious consequences than those experienced by Tiger Woods or Elliot Spitzer. The recent scandals involving the “Ashley Madison” website, which advertised dating services with the tag line, “life is short, have an affair,” catered to married people seeking affairs. Hackers infiltrated the site and released the email addresses of millions of members. Media outlets reported fears and concerns of married people, mostly men, who were terrified of being discovered. Some well-known people were revealed— such as reality TV personality Josh Duggar, from the television show “19 Kids and Counting,” who had ironically built a career around the promotion of marriage and family values.

In a 2013 survey conducted in thirty nine countries, the Pew Research Center found that across the countries polled, a median of 79 percent consider infidelity unacceptable—including an overwhelming 84 percent of Americans.

France was the only country where less than 50 percent of respondents described infidelity as unacceptable. Instead, four-in-ten think it is not a moral issue; twelve percent say it is morally acceptable. There is essentially no gender gap on this issue: 45 percent of French men and 50 percent of women saying affairs are unacceptable (Wike, 2014).

In contemporary American discourse, affairs are primarily described in terms of the damage caused (Perel, 2017): Generally, there is much concern for the agony suffered by the betrayed. Infidelity today isn’t just a violation of trust; it’s a shattering of the grand ambition of romantic love. It is a shock that makes us question our past, our future, and even our very identity. Indeed, the maelstrom of emotions unleashed in the wake of an affair

can be so overwhelming that many psychologists turn to the field of trauma to explain the symptoms: obsessive rumination, hypervigilance, numbness and dissociation, inexplicable rages, uncontrollable panic.

Despite growing rates of infidelity, examples from the Ten Commandments, Greek mythology, modern films, and the media illustrate the punishments given to those who commit adultery. These dramatizations portray the heartbreak and destruction of the family that can result from such behaviors.

In novels like Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester can be a sympathetic character because his wife is considered insane. However, he must suffer greatly by going blind and losing his hand before the reader can fully justify his adulterous affair with the heroine.

Media stories of the previously mentioned politicians and celebrities who engaged in affairs show societies condemnation of their behavior. Their wives are portrayed sympathetically, as the victims of horrible men with no morals. John Edwards, the one-time front-runner for the Democratic Vice-Presidential race in 2008, was especially vilified for having an affair while his wife was fighting cancer of which she later died from in 2010.

In any social group, affairs occur; inevitably, people pick sides. Most people can recall learning about an affair involving a neighbor, family member, or church member and then hearing a combination of comments ranging from, “How could he do that to that sweet woman?” and “I can’t believe she had an affair. They seemed like the perfect couple!” To, “Do you really blame him? She is so mean to him!”

Onlookers typically assume, guess, and dissect the situation based on what they know. They will often then assign blame; however, the multiple factors involved in affairs are hard to sort through— even for the couple themselves. Therapists who work with couples experiencing affairs often hear the phrase, “I don’t know how it happened” with many, if not most, of the couples.

Modern culture has provided a context in which people view romantic love, marriage, and affairs. Western culture portrays love as all consuming, full of passion, with happiness that lasts forever, and very few problems. People often expect romance and passion to stay at the peak levels that they experienced early on in their relationships.

When this passion slows down, couples oftentimes feel that something went wrong. They may then seek romance in outside relationships. It is a fact that passionate love does decrease in marriage over time (Todorovic, 2016). But not everyone has an affair while married. And some partners in sexually satisfying marriages have affairs; the desire to seek passion and romance in and of itself does not explain infidelity.

Factors in affairs: Demographics and more Humans are not simple—neither are relationships. To gain an understanding of affairs and couples counseling for affairs, it is important to review several key studies that examine the variables of couples who experience infidelity in terms of their demographic characteristics, values, and personality traits.

The implications found in the research regarding why affairs may occur provide an increased level of understanding to the therapist working with these couples in the aftermath of an affair. This course explores the characteristics of different types of affairs, including the increasing prevalence of cyber-sex and online affairs. Treatment approaches are also discussed, as these different types of affairs present a need for somewhat different therapeutic interventions.

Research by the Zur Institute has noted that our culture holds many myths about affairs that have been proven to be incorrect (Zur, 2017): • The “infidel” must not “love” their partner; the affair proves it. • The person in the affair must be “sexier” than the spouse. • The best approach to the discovery of a spouse’s affair is to pretend not to know and thereby avoid a crisis. • Human beings are naturally monogamous. • Affairs are good for you; an affair may even revive a dull marriage.

• Everyone is unfaithful; it is normal, expectable behavior. • Monogamy is the norm in our society and most other societies. • Men initiate almost all affairs. • An affair always means there are serious problems in the marriage. • Infidelity is a sign that sex is missing or unsatisfactory at home. • Women are more likely to have an affair because they feel unhappy in their marriages. Men, on the other hand, will do it just for sex. • Men who have affairs are more likely to do so without emotional involvement; whereas women's affairs are more often accompanied by emotional involvement. • Telling all the details of the affair to the betrayed spouse will help heal the marriage. • Affairs should always be disclosed to the uninvolved partner (regardless of the potential for domestic violence or even murder when such disclosure takes place). • Men are more concerned about their romantic partners having passionate sex with someone else, while women are more concerned that their partners are falling-in-love with someone else. • Most people are monogamous, so an affair indicates a moral failure, character deficiency and a failure of the marriage. • People generally seek in an affair what they do not get at home from their spouse. • Concerns about AIDS will reduce the frequency of affairs. • Marital sex is always safe sex. • Internet sex and Internet infidelity are not considered extramarital affairs. • Extramarital affairs are never consensual. • Parental infidelity increases the likelihood of their children's infidelity. • If an affair occurs, the marriage must end in divorce.

It is also important to clarify that the majority of available studies do not provide data for same- sex couples. Nor do these available studies include long-term couples who live together but have never married. These two groups are typically not a part of the literature surrounding infidelity; thus, the studies and statistics quoted regarding infidelity usually only apply heterosexual couples in a legally recognized marriage.

In addition, it is important to clarify the term “infidelity,” which may not mean the same thing to everyone. One person may consider the relationship between Celeste and Dave (noted above) as an affair; another individual may not see it that way.

In most of the studies cited, infidelity typically follows the definition for “extramarital” that is used in the Merriam Webster Dictionary as, “Of, relating to, or sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse: adulterous. An extramarital affair.”

However, this course will later discuss Internet affairs and pornography as newer forms of affairs that do not necessarily fit the classic definition of infidelity.

Infidelity statistics

Percent of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, 41 % either physical or emotional.

Percent of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship 57 % they’ve had.

Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any 54 % relationship they’ve had.

Percent of married men who have strayed at least once during their 22 % married lives.

Percent of married women who have strayed at least once during their 14 % married lives.

Percentage of men and women who admit to having an affair with a co- 36 % worker.

Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity on business trips. 35%

Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity with a brother- 17 % in-law or sister-in-law.

Source: Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2016.

While most of the public scandals in the news have featured men as the straying spouse (and men are statistically still more often involved in extramarital affairs), recent studies indicate that

women are having affairs at a rate that grew almost 40 percent from 2000 to 2010— to an overall rate of 14 percent of all married women. The rate for men over the same time period remained just about the same— 22 percent (Perel, 2017).

Perel notes that today there is no universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes infidelity. “Sexting? Watching porn? Staying secretly active on dating sites? Kissing? Thinking about kissing? There’s no way to measure. Estimates vary from 26 percent to 75 percent.”

A recent study found that men and women are equally likely to pursue affairs for emotional reasons or sexual reasons, and there no notable differences in men and women’s motivation to have affairs if they were unhappy emotionally or sexually (Dashnaw, 2017a). In American culture, men are often thought to pursue sexual variety as a function of their evolutionary or biological impulses.

Psychologist Suzanne Phillips writes, “Evolutionary theory, gender differences, stereotype, media myth and cultural expectations invite us to recognize that men have more sexual desire than women both in frequency and intensity, are wired to have many partners, have more difficulty with monogamy and that as such, married men are more likely to have affairs than married women” (Phillips, 2013). Overall, this is not the case.

Other studies indicate that men and women tend to have affairs for somewhat different reasons. Dr. Frank Pittman, an expert in marital therapy, noted that men were more likely to admit to having sex with another woman, but deny any emotional attachment as part of the affair. Women, however, tended to open up about the emotional aspects of the affair and minimize the sexual connection that they had with another man— or deny that sex had even occurred.

It is important to note that there are numerous variables involved in marital infidelity, including gender, but also include the often-overlooked variables of education, marital satisfaction, opportunity, economic status, prior history of divorce, and religious beliefs. Atkins, Baucom, and Jacobson’s landmark 2001 study, updated in 2010, was the first to use sound methodological

practices to investigate various correlates of affairs (such as those noted in the previous paragraph) using a model that studied each variable, as well as the interaction of these variables.

Marital happiness was an important variable associated with infidelity. Respondents who characterized their marriages as “not too happy” were four times as likely to have had affairs as those respondents who described their marriages as “very happy.”

A 2014 study showed that various factors such as sexual satisfaction have an important impact on the satisfaction of the marital relationship (Ziaee et al., 2014). The findings showed that on a marital satisfaction scale, the majority of the participants (63.6 percent) were very satisfied and none of them were very unsatisfied. In sexual satisfaction scale, most of the participants (56.4 percent) expressed extremely satisfaction rate; only 0.7 percent were not satisfied with their sexual relationship. Marital satisfaction was significantly associated with sexual satisfaction (p ≤ 0.001).

With the increase of sexual satisfaction, there was also an increase in marital satisfaction. There was a significant association between sexual satisfaction and age (p = 0.086). Additionally, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) test comparing the mean age of participants in different levels of sexual satisfaction indicated that lower mean age led to an increase in sexual satisfaction— this relationship was almost significant (p = 0.086). However, the higher level of education, the lower number of children, the shorter duration of marriage, and the lower age difference between the couples tended to increase the sexual satisfaction; however, the association was not statistically significant.

Another study by Weir (2015) reports that people with the most, and the least, education are more likely to cheat. This refers to those with less than an eighth-grade education— or an education beyond a master's degree.

Mark, Janssen & Milhausen from the Kinsey Institute (2011) noted relationship unhappiness correlated with increased rates of infidelity for both men and women. In comparing men who engaged in infidelity with those who had not, they found that 72 percent of those who had affairs reported lower happiness in their relationships before having an affair; whereas among those

10 who had been monogamous, only 47 percent reported lower levels of happiness in their relationships.

Likewise, 67 percent of men who reported that they had lower levels of sexual satisfaction also reported affairs, but only 47 percent of men who were happy with their sexual relationships had affairs. Interestingly, for women, lower sexual satisfaction was not associated with participation in affairs. Relationship unhappiness was reported for 62 percent of women who had affairs. In those women who assessed their relationships as “more happy,” forty percent engaged in an affair.

This study was somewhat unique in that the authors went beyond the oft-studied demographic variables and values: they also explored the dimension of sexual satisfaction, as well as levels of sexual excitation and sexual inhibition as factors in the tendency to engage in an affair. The authors also examined other factors they termed “sexual personality variables.” Using self-report measures, the participants were assessed for their tendency to engage in sex when very happy or depressed, their rate of sexual excitation, their levels of performance inhibition while engaging in sexual activity, and their levels of inhibition related to the consequences of sexual behavior (i.e. being afraid to have sex for fear of getting an STD).

When examining sexual behaviors for both genders, the study found a higher rate of affairs among men and women who had the tendency to engage in sexual behaviors when they were in either very positive or very negative moods. These findings suggest that very positive moods could result in ignoring consequences of affairs; negative moods influence people to seek solace in a sexual relationship.

In addition, men who reported higher levels of sexual excitation did engage more often in affairs. No such increase in infidelity was found for women who had high levels of sexual excitability. Both men and women, however, participated more often in affairs when they ranked lower on levels on inhibition for consequences; even more interesting, both genders had affairs at a higher rate when they scored higher in levels of sexual performance inhibition. As the authors noted, this finding may seem to not make sense at first glance, and that more inhibited people would be

more likely to have an affair. However, those persons who experience inhibition in their primary sexual relationship may seek risky experiences— such as an affair—to increase their arousal and decrease their inhibitions.

Other studies have found that sensation-seeking plays a role in infidelity for both genders. Najad and Jenaabadi (2014) found that there were no meaningful differences in men and women who engaged in affairs when the women had high levels of sensation-seeking tendencies. Both men and women with high levels of sensation-seeking were significantly more likely to engage in affairs than those with lower needs for sensation-seeking.

They also compared sensation seeking and marital satisfaction among 310 couples selected in three stages as a sample. The statistical population was dividedly into four groups of both couples’ satisfaction seekers; both nonsatisfaction seekers; wife-satisfaction seeker and husband non-satisfaction seeker; husband satisfaction seeker, and wife non-satisfaction seeker. It can be inferred from their study that sensation-seeking influences marital satisfaction negatively, as according to results from this research and other studies that the lower the degree of sensation seeking, the higher the marital satisfaction.

Infidelity doesn’t necessarily signal an unhappy relationship. Regardless of the correlation between relationship dissatisfaction and adultery, among individuals engaging in infidelity in one study (Fscher, 2014), 56 percent of men and 34 percent of women rated their marriage as “happy” or “very happy.”

Infidelity happens in bad and good marriages— even in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand (Perel, 2017). Freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete.

The fact that infidelity occurs in good marriages runs counter to conventional wisdom that affairs only happen when there is a problem in the marriage and one of the partners is unhappy. This is based on the incorrect belief that if the married couple is fulfilled at home, they should have no

12 reason to have an affair to meet their emotional or sexual needs. Therefore, the misconception is that infidelity must be a symptom of an unsatisfactory or a failed relationship.

Perel notes the fallacy in this belief: 1. It reinforces the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage that will inoculate the couple against wanderlust. In fact, in a cruel twist of fate, it is precisely the expectation of domestic bliss that may set us up for infidelity. Today, we stray because marriage fails to deliver the love and passion it promised. It’s not our desires that are different today, but the fact that we feel entitled, even obligated, to pursue them.

2. Infidelity does not always correlate neatly with marital dysfunction. In many cases, however, an affair does compensate for a lack of happiness in the marriage or to set up an exit. Insecure attachment, conflict avoidance, prolonged lack of sex, loneliness, or just years of rehashing the same old arguments, many adulterers are motivated by domestic discord. And then there are the repeat offenders: the narcissists who cheat with impunity simply because they can.

3. Many individuals report that they are best friends and happy together, and then say, “But I am having an affair.” They were faithful for years, sometimes decades, seem to be well-balanced, mature, caring, and deeply invested in their relationship. Yet one day, they crossed a line that they never imagined that they would cross.

As a therapist, Perel has worked with these clients to explain and understand the meaning behind the affair despite marital satisfaction. Questions to be answered include: • Why did you do it? • Why him? • Why her? • Why now? • Was this the first time? • Did you initiate? • Did you try to resist? • How did it feel?

• Were you looking for something? • What did you find?

Here are some conclusions from Perel’s work: • What for Partner A may be an agonizing betrayal may be transformative for Partner B. Extramarital adventures are painful and destabilizing, but they can also be liberating and empowering. Understanding both sides is crucial, as is whether a couple chooses to end the relationship or intends to stay together, to rebuild and revitalize. • The intricacies of love and desire don’t yield to simple categorizations of good and bad, victim and perpetrator. Not condemning does not mean condoning— there is a world of difference between understanding and justifying. The role of a therapist is to create a space where the diversity of experiences can be explored with compassion. People stray for a multitude of reasons. • One of the most common experiences reported by the unfaithful is that, “It makes me feel alive.” The affair is about neither the spouse nor the relationship. Her story echoes a theme that has come up repeatedly: affairs are a form of self-discovery, a quest for a new (or lost) identity. For these seekers, infidelity is less likely to be a symptom of a problem, and more likely an expansive experience that involves growth, exploration, and transformation. • Whatever “fancy New Age label” describes infidelity, Perel believes it is cruel, selfish, dishonest, and abusive to the one who has been betrayed. Intimate betrayal feels intensely personal: a direct attack in the most vulnerable place. And yet Perel often asks jilted lovers to consider a question that seems ludicrous to them: What if the affair had nothing to do with you? She explains that sometimes when we seek the gaze of another, it’s not our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. The Mexican essayist Octavio Paz described eroticism as a “thirst for otherness.” So often, the most intoxicating “other” that people discover in an affair is not a new partner— it’s a new self. • Human beings have a tendency to look for the truth in the places where it is easiest to search, rather than in the places where it’s likely to be. This may explain why the “failed

marriage” theory holds: it is easier to blame a factor in the marriage than face and resolve the true, underlying meaning behind the affair. • Secluded from the responsibilities of everyday life, the parallel universe of the affair is often idealized, infused with the promise of transcendence. For some people, it is a world of possibility, an alternate reality in which they can reimagine and reinvent themselves. Then again, it is experienced as limitless precisely because it is contained within the limits of its clandestine structure. Forbidden love stories are Utopian by nature, especially in contrast with the mundane constraints of marriage and family. • The indeterminacy, the uncertainty, the not knowing when they will see each other again, feelings they would never tolerate in a primary relationship, become kindling for anticipation in a hidden romance. Because they cannot have the lover, drives the desire. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and keeps the flame burning. • When the prohibition is lifted, when the divorce comes through, when the sublime mixes with the ordinary and the affair enters the real world, what then? Some settle into happy legitimacy; many more do not. In Perel’s experience, most affairs end— even if the marriage ends as well. However authentic the feelings of love, the dalliance was only ever meant to be a beautiful fiction.

Religion and extramarital affairs Religious affiliation may not be associated with any differences in the rate of extramarital affairs, but other measures of religious behavior show slight differences (Wright, 2016).

Analyzing the religion-cheating link is more complicated since religion has multiple dimensions. Perhaps the most straightforward one is religious affiliation. A commonly used framework for analyzing American religions is the Reltrad classification, which categorizes seven distinct religious traditions in the U.S. and rates of extramarital sex vary across these traditions (Wright, 2016).

At the low end are Jews (13.2 percent) and Catholics (13.6 percent). At the high end are Black Protestants (21.9 percent). In between are evangelicals, mainline Protestants, members of other faiths, and the religious “nones”— those with no religion.

Based on just affiliation, religion does not make much difference in men’s odds of having extramarital sex. A review of other measures of religion, however, when it comes to attending religious services it appears that having a little religious involvement goes a long way. Close to 18 percent of men who rarely, if ever, attend church services have engaged in extramarital sex. Men who attend services weekly (14.3 percent), monthly (15.7 percent), or even just yearly (14.3 percent) show lower rates.

When it comes to religious ideology, liberals and moderates have modestly lower rates (14.9 percent and 15 percent) than religious fundamentalists.

However, men who view the Bible as just a book of fables have a higher rate of extramarital sex (16.1 percent) compared to those who view it as the Inspired Word (15.7 percent), or the Word of God (14.3 percent).

Respondents who attended church or other religious services weekly were just as likely to have affairs as non-religious people if the religious person reported their marital happiness as “not too happy” or “pretty happy.”

However, if a person was both religious and reported being “very happy” in their marriage, they were much less likely to have an affair than someone who was very happy and not religious (Tuttle & Davis, 2016). They examined the effect of religiosity on marital infidelity and subsequent divorce among couples married for at least 12 years.

Their analyses reveal that religiosity reduces the likelihood of marital infidelity among these couples. However, the effect of religiosity on the likelihood of a subsequent divorce is more complicated: Religiosity appears to indirectly reduce the likelihood of a subsequent divorce by

increasing levels of marital happiness. Surprisingly, no influence is found of marital infidelity on marital stability or divorce.

This interaction of variables provides an example of how affairs are not just the result of simple cause and effect, but also can lead to differences only when found in certain combinations. The authors concluded that religious values could enhance one’s marital commitment, but only when the marriage was described as very happy. Otherwise, it appeared that martial unhappiness outweighed religious values.

In addition, other variables influenced the rate of extramarital affairs. For example, being employed outside the home led to more affairs for both men and women. The authors believed was an obvious reflection of the opportunity that the workplace provided.

Higher income levels were also associated with increased numbers of affairs: people earning over $75,000 per year were 1.5 times more likely to have an affair than those earning less than $30,000 per year.

The authors hypothesized that lower levels of income decreased the opportunity for someone to travel and meet someone with whom to have an affair, for example, or to engage in social activities, such as going out with friends where one might meet someone.

Respondents with higher education levels also engaged in affairs at a higher rate: Persons with graduate degrees reported affairs 1.75 times more often than someone with a high school education. One possible explanation for the education variable may be that more highly educated people have more liberal attitudes about sex in general. Other factors, such as a history of a previous divorce, was associated with someone being twice as likely to engage in an affair as a respondent in their first marriage, but the authors were not able to discern exactly why this led to more infidelity.

Age at marriage was another variable that impacted rates of infidelity. An individual who was married at age sixteen was four times as likely to have an affair as someone married at the age of

twenty-three. The authors inferred that this was the result of many teenage marriages begin under difficult circumstances, such as unplanned pregnancies and possible parental disapproval. This can in turn lead to more marital stress and less happiness, and thus more affairs. Men were more likely to report affairs overall; however, the authors noted that among younger respondents, the gender gap was smaller.

There are also some interesting findings regarding the interaction of gender and earnings that influence the tendency to have an extramarital affair. Munsch (2015) examined the effect of earnings on infidelity and found that men who were not the primary breadwinners in a couple were more likely to have an affair. Munsch hypothesized that the lack of earning power and the dependence on one’s partner made the men feel threatened. Having affairs allowed them to both emotionally distance themselves from their wives, and allowed them to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy.

Marital stability does appear to be a key variable in infidelity. A recent study discovered that marital violence, lack of time spent with a spouse, and marital instability all contributed to significant risks for an affair. However, greater religious commitment showed as a protective factor against infidelity in this study but weaker when the wife was in the labor force. (DeMaris, 2014).

Attachment styles and lifestyle factors Marital satisfaction is one of the deepest and the most basic human pleasures and should be established within the family environment; if not, couples might suffer emotionally. Several factors are involved, including attachment and lifestyle (Mohammadi et al., 2016). The results indicate that attachment style and lifestyle factors can predict marital satisfaction. There was also a meaningful negative relationship between insecure attachment, avoidant and insecure attachment, anxious-ambivalent style, and marital satisfaction.

However, there was no meaningful relationship between secure attachment style and marital satisfaction. The early relationship within the family environment supports a certain attachment style and the effects of the avoidant insecure and ambivalent insecure styles affect the

interpersonal relations of the couples in adulthood. The effect of attachment styles on interpersonal relations is far greater than that of lifestyle.

When an infant receives responsive parenting that meets his or her needs, the infant develops a secure attachment style to the mother or other caregiver. If the infant receives little response to his or her needs due to neglect or a lack of responsiveness from the caregiver, the infant becomes avoidant and then detaches. The third type of attachment, anxious/ambivalent, is thought to develop when an infant receives very inconsistent parenting from a caregiver.

In adulthood, these three attachment styles play out in romantic relationships in different ways.

Securely attached adults balance well between independence and dependence.

Anxiously attached individuals cling, act needy, and fear abandonment. They often feel unloved and have issues with trust. Those with avoidant attachment style withhold their emotions, lack trust of others, and avoid being dependent on others for emotional support (Collins & Feeney, 2013).

Empirical support has been found in studies that support the hypothesis that those who have an avoidant attachment style are more likely to engage in extramarital affairs. A meta-analysis of eight studies indicated that people with avoidant attachment styles had more permissive attitudes toward affairs, were more likely to perceive people other than their partners more positively than those with other attachment styles, spent more time seeking alternatives to their current relationship, and did engage in higher rates of infidelity over time (Chester & DeWall., 2017).

Another study found support for the role of avoidant attachment in infidelity. Fish, Pavkov, Wetchler, & Bercik (2012) found that adults with an avoidant attachment style were more likely to have affairs, but also found that people with an anxious attachment style were also just as likely to have engaged in affairs. The anxiously attached person’s need to be fused with another may be an influence on seeking affairs to fill an unmet need of emotional security in a relationship.

Summary

In general, men are more likely to have affairs. Men who are financially dependent on their wives appear to more likely to have extramarital sex, as are more highly educated people and those with higher incomes— regardless of gender. But demographics alone do not tell the full story; other studies provide support for individual levels of sexual interest, sensation seeking, level of inhibition, and overall attachment styles also play an important role in who does and does not have an affair.

The definition of infidelity According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, infidelity is defined as unfaithfulness to a moral obligation: disloyalty, the act or fact of having a romantic or sexual relationship with someone other than one's husband, wife, or partner.

Having examined risk factors for infidelity, it is then important to think about what constitutes infidelity, the impact of infidelity on a relationship, and how infidelity presents in different types of affairs. A definition of infidelity is not as simple as it would initially appear.

Blow & Hartnett (2005) noted: Infidelity is defined in a myriad of ways and can compromise a number of activities including: having an affair, extramarital relationship, cheating, sexual intercourse, oral sex, kissing, fondling, emotional connections that are beyond friendships, friendships, Internet relationships, pornography use, and others.

A study conducted by Vossler & Moller (2014), found that even couples counselors did not uniformly agree as to what constituted infidelity based upon the counselors’ experiences in working with couples experiencing infidelity. The study did come up with a range of categories which were: • Sexual intercourse.

• Extramarital sexual activities, which included other forms of sexual contact, such as oral sex or kissing someone outside the marriage. • Emotional betrayal, which could include “falling in love” or even friendships that placed an outside party over one’s partner, even if no sexualized behavior occurred.

The first definition, sexual intercourse, was almost universally recognized as infidelity— except for those couples identified by counselors who had agreements to allow sexual intercourse with others as part of an open relationship, or for those who identified as “swingers.”

It is interesting to note that for some of these open-marriage couples, sexual intercourse was fine, but sexual behaviors, such as kissing, were considered infidelity. Research indicates that the meaning attached to sexual terms depends on various factors, including culture and context. This underlines that defining infidelity in terms of sexual intercourse may not be very helpful for understanding what infidelity actually means to people.

The second definition of sexualized behaviors created many issues with couples in treatment, such as to a husband kissing another woman and denying it was a sign of infidelity, but the wife saw the kiss itself as an act of infidelity.

The counselors noted in these cases that a frequently used argument denying infidelity was that no sexual intercourse occurred, so it was not really cheating. Other behaviors, such as going to strip clubs, viewing pornography, cybersex, exchanging sexual self-images, suggestive text messages and photos, and online flirting also produced situations that were often viewed differently by each partner — one partner felt betrayed and the other exclaimed that these behaviors were harmless. One conclusion that can be drawn from the research in this area is that there is a lot of individual difference in which behaviors are defined as infidelity; for couples counseling, this suggests a wide field for potential conflict.

Emotional betrayal was also hard to define. Spouses who engaged in these relationships would deny anything wrong was happening and maintained that it was only a friendship. Their partners, however, felt quite differently and believed the other was engaging in an affair.

Emotional infidelity has been operationalized in various, rather vague, ways. These ways include: ‘deep emotional attachment’; ‘falling in love with another person’; feeling ‘deeply connected’; sharing intimate details, and; discussing complaints about the primary partner and meeting for an alcoholic drink.

In theory, any behavior that is kept secret or evokes a sense of betrayal can be defined as infidelity. An even broader definition of infidelity in terms of behaviors which break a couple’s contract and violate couple norms or contravene assumptions about relationship exclusivity can also be found in the literature.

In most cases, these friendships were seen as emotional betrayal and infidelity when the involved spouse considered the friendship to be as, or even more important, than the marriage. Overall, any of the above behaviors were seen as infidelity when an element of lying or keeping secrets was present. Therefore, it is important for any counselor working with couples in the aftermath of infidelity to understand that the couple may not be in agreement over whether or not infidelity actually occurred: reaching an agreement about the infidelity may be the first step in treatment.

One difficulty in treating couples after an affair involves the ambiguity of some of these affairs that are of the type described by DeMaris (2014) as the “other” types of sexual behaviors that exclude actual intercourse.

Moller & Vossler completed a qualitative study that explores how seven experienced couple counselors define infidelity (2014). Their results are summarized below:

Infidelity as penetrative sex Many of those interviewed stated that for clients, the most common definition of infidelity was “penetrative sex” outside the committed relationship: “If you took a hundred clients, most of them would say infidelity was actually sleeping with another.” Counselors commented that this definition was so pervasive that some clients would defend themselves against charges of infidelity on the grounds that “nothing sexual took place.”

In contrast to the view of clients commonly defining infidelity in terms of penetrative sex outside the relationship, there was the perception that this definition of infidelity was becoming seen as culturally outmoded, only relevant to a 1950s or 1960s traditional relationship (Moller & Vossler, 2014). The shifting of definitions may contribute to potential differences in infidelity definitions between partners presenting for marital counseling and between counselors and clients.

Infidelity as sexual behaviors It was clear from the analysis that participants did define infidelity in terms of a broader category of sexual behaviors. For example, a number of counselors stated that although looking with desire at another person was not infidelity, any kind of physical touch was. If any type of touch was infidelity for some counselors and their clients, for others non-physical sexual contact was also infidelity. For example, so-called ‘sexting’, ranging from sending mobile phone text messages that were more or less flirtatious, to receiving mobile phone pictures of somebody’s genitals, was described as infidelity by some (but not all) counselors.

Counselor Four, for example, stated that although ‘sexting’ might lead to trust issues in a couple, that it was rare that clients would refer to this type of behavior in and of itself as “an affair.” One way of thinking about the different perspectives on non-physical sexual contact is in terms of a hierarchy of behavior with penetrative sex at the top, and other ‘milder’ forms of sexualized behavior at the bottom; in this schema, the counselors and clients simply vary about where on the behavior continuum they see the infidelity cut-off— this behavior is infidelity, this behavior is not.

Yet, the data suggested that both counselors and clients may in some contexts not see sexual behaviors as infidelity. For example, participants talked about how clients who have had sex outside the relationship may deny infidelity on the grounds that it was “only a one night stand” and “there was never any real relationship.” Another counselor made a similar distinction, stating that they did not see the actions of a sex addict, or “somebody who sleeps around because they need sex” as infidelity.

Emotional infidelity These included developing romantic feelings about, or falling in love with, someone else: “I think the most difficult to come to terms with are when some, the other party’s fallen in love with someone else... it feels like the biggest betrayal.” The couples’ counselors also discussed how non-sexual and non-romantic relationships could prompt infidelity concerns. This type of relationship also “evokes very powerful feelings and shakes the relationship up very badly,” and can be “perceived as being like an affair and is treated as an affair.”

Non-sexual/non-romantic relationships may be perceived as threatening to the primary relationship because they have sexual and/or strong emotional components to them (e.g. warm feelings for a close friend). Such relationships may also be seen as problematic if they are perceived to impinge on the primary relationship. Counselors often saw the perception of infidelity following from Internet or mobile phone-based communication as arising not from the behavior itself, but from how much it was engaged in.

For example, social networking sites were described as problematic for a couple when one partner’s usage began “to encroach upon the closeness, the intimacy, the secure base of the relationship.” Another counselor saw texting as potentially problematic when the frequency of texting to non-sexual friends at work made the other partner “envious.” This notion of infidelity as defined by quantity of a behavior rather than necessarily its quality is also implicit in another counselor’s definition of infidelity in terms of “paying too much attention to somebody else, or fantasizing for too long.”

Another way of thinking about this is as infidelity as defined by whether the behavior detracts from the core relationship— even if the entire ‘affair’ is virtual or fantasy: “It doesn’t matter even if it’s just in your head.” This definition does not make it easy to know when a friendship is or is not infidelity.

As one couples’ counselor put it, infidelity is “where their partner is getting something external, stimulation— whatever that is, whether that’s a friendship, it’s a web site or you know gambling or whatever, it’s something happening outside the relationship.”

Infidelity as secrets and betrayal While the participants defined infidelity — in part — in terms of the quantity of a behavior, they also defined it in terms of the quality and the impact of a partner behavior. Counselor Seven discussed the difference between having a sexual conversation over the Internet with another person while sitting next to your partner, versus doing so secretly in the upstairs study while your partner watches television downstairs.

As one counselor stated, infidelity involves the: Establishment of an intimate, not necessarily physically intimate, relationship with another person that was quite clearly established on the basis of exclusion of the partner. In other words, you can have such a friendship if it’s a shared friendship but the moment it becomes a secret hidden friendship then that has become infidelity.

In these terms, infidelity is defined by the extent to which is it about “secrecy and deceit,” and “very calculated” — that is, how the behavior is enacted in the relationship rather than by the behavior itself. Yet the participants also talked about infidelity as being identified not only with secret acts by one party but also by the emotional response of the other partner.

Implications for therapy The findings of this study show that defining infidelity presents a challenge not only for researchers but also for counselors working therapeutically with cases of infidelity. It is clear from this study that infidelity-as-sexual-intercourse is not a definition that, on its own, will work for couples counseling.

The analysis showed that one might see a sexual behavior as infidelity while the other might not. This chimes with research that shows a viewer’s perspective impacts the perception of a behavior as sexual: while masturbation with someone other than the partner was seen as ‘sex’ by only four percent of participants in one study, it was seen as sexual infidelity by 95 percent of participants (Moller & Vossler, 2014).

A social constructionist view of infidelity supports the idea of “eye-of-the-beholder” definitions of infidelity, with the advantage that no one is excluded and no definition is privileged over another. Such an approach appreciates all perspectives as valid within some particular context and can help counselors maintain a curious— yet impartial and empathic — position toward both partners (Reibstein, 2013). This suggests that for practitioners, the focus is not on the ultimate definition or ‘true’ meaning of infidelity; rather, the focus is on the impact of different possible perspectives and their usefulness for the couple.

A typology of affairs The exact definition of infidelity will never be universally agreed upon by either clinicians or the public. However, moving forward with some type of consensus of at least a working idea of what infidelity is, it is important to consider how infidelity is then acted out within the context of an affair.

Emily Brown, author of Patterns of Infidelity and Their Treatment, first published in 1991 and updated in 2013, describes several different types of affairs. Each type of affair contains a different message. Brown explains five types of affairs: • Conflict avoidance—I will make you pay attention to me. • Intimacy avoidance—I do not need you that much, so I’ll get some of my needs met elsewhere. • Sexual addiction—Fill me up, I’m running on empty. • Exit affairs—Help me make it out the door. • Split-self—I love my family, but I’m in love with my affair partner.

As Brown notes, all affairs at first have a similar beginning, stating, “affairs are most alike in their early moments: exciting, compelling, with the thrill of the forbidden. With the typical one- night stand, the excitement is present, but there is little in the way of a relationship and the outcome may be guilt or simply relief at getting one’s fix. When emotional attachment to the person is part of the affair, its durability usually exceeds one night. Feelings that have been dormant spring to life. The affair is ‘our secret’ and little else seems as important. Risks are ignored or rationalized. The intoxication is so heady that the straying partner is blinded.”

Brown notes that affairs can last from one night to a lifetime, but the average affair lasts a few months to about a year, maybe two years. People involved in affairs who normally use good judgement in other areas of their lives often do not stop to think about the risks involved to their families, to their careers, or to their future if the affair would end in divorce.

Each type of affair expresses interactions between the spouses— not just the behaviors or the motives of the partner who has the affair.

Conflict avoidance typically occurs early on in a marriage in couples who have problems discussing issues. The affair is a subconscious attempt by the straying spouse to bring attention to the unaddressed marital issues. Oftentimes, these couples are regarded by others as happy people with ideal marriages. Typically, the partners in these marriages have a hard time expressing anger toward one another. This could be due to learning in childhood that anger was bad and should be avoided. The straying person usually feels a great deal of guilt and bewilderment as to how they got into the affair in the first place.

In intimacy avoidance affairs, the affair provides a way for the straying partner to keep an emotional distance and to avoid feelings of vulnerability and neediness. Oftentimes, these couples relate through conflict. Intimacy avoiders are more often men than women. Exit affairs are a way for someone to leave a marriage; conflict avoiders tend to use the affair as a way to avoid facing the real issues in their marriage that they would rather not confront.

The split-self affair is usually a long-term affair that starts as a friendship and then leads to the situation where the partner having the affair is torn between their spouse and their other relationship. The split-self affair is an emotional one that is intense and deep and can lead to high levels of guilt and anguish for the straying spouse.

Oftentimes, those who engage in these types of affairs have a strong desire to be moral, honorable, and do the right thing— no matter what their real feelings might be. They are often the type of people who will stay in a miserable marriage because they made a commitment to do

so; along the way, however, they meet someone who awakens their repressed emotional needs for intimacy and love.

The last type of affair listed is sometimes referred to the “sexual addiction” affair. Sex addicts engage in compulsive behaviors related to affairs and will engage in sexual affairs of varying intensity. There is often little emotional connection in these affairs; sex addicts have an underlying set of issues that require intensive treatment, which will be explored in greater depth in the next section.

Brown (2013) notes that the conflict avoidance affair is the most amenable to therapy and that the split-self affair is the most difficult to work with in couples.

Sexual addiction is a special type of affair.

Some view the term “sexual addiction” as an excuse for having affairs and not as a legitimate mental health issue that leads to compulsive behaviors. A proposed diagnosis of hypersexual disorder was not included in the DSM-5, even after the researchers determined that hypersexual disorder was a valid diagnosis (Weiss, 2014). In a follow-up study, Reid and Kafka (2014) examined why this occurred and concluded that politics, misinformation, and concerns that the disorder would be used as a defense in criminal trials of pedophiles all led to the non-inclusion of the diagnosis. Kafka (2014) notes that “sexual addiction is not the same thing as infidelity. It is not a moral problem or an excuse to behave badly. Sex addiction progresses, gets out of control and becomes a progressive pattern and takes over the addict’s life.”

Kafka states that sexual addiction meets the same criteria for addiction as alcoholism, noting that there is/are: • Compulsive behaviors. • Loss of control. • Loss of time. • Efforts to stop. • Preoccupation.

• Inability to fulfill obligations. • Escalation. • Withdrawal. • Continuation despite consequences. • Losses.

Kafka also notes that there is no universal agreement about who is and who is not a sex addict. The exact diagnostic criteria and other technical issues related to this issue are not the same to all people. However, most every therapist recognizes that certain people engage in risky, compulsive behaviors. If one chooses to use the term sexual addiction or to call it something else, it can create a serious crisis in a relationship.

The impact of an affair Infidelity, including physical and emotional affairs, is one of the main drivers of divorce. There are also many affairs that begin through social media because it is so easy to reconnect privately with someone from one’s past or present on Facebook.

According to Perel (2017), infidelity is of one of the biggest betrayals a marriage can face; for some couples the marriage will end because of a one-night stand. For others, it can be multiple offenses. The destruction of trust in an already-weak relationship can often be the death knell to the relationship.

The traumatic symptoms present in many people after the discovery of their partner’s affair is recognized by many clinicians who offer trauma-based treatment (Snyder, Baucom, & Gordon, 2016).

Over the years, researchers have noted the damaging consequences of affairs. Most recently, Blow and Hartnett (2005) noted feelings of abandonment, rage, mistrust, loss of confidence, and severe blows to one’s self-esteem.

Following an initial disclosure of an affair, it is common for both partners to experience depression. This can include suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and a profound sense of loss. The reactions of the injured party can begin as acute stress that quickly resemble the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (AAMFT, 2016). Common reactions to the loss of innocence and shattered assumptions include: • Obsessively pondering details of the affair. • Continuously watching for further signs of betrayal. • Physiological hyper-arousal, flashbacks and intrusive images.

The most severely traumatized are those who had the greatest trust and were the most unsuspecting. The involved partner may fear that they will be punished forever for the betrayal while they grieve for the lost dreams associated with the affair (AAMFT, 2016).

Treatment of affairs It is important to note that 50 to 60 percent of couples in treatment for the impact of infidelity seek to reconcile (Bargarozzi, 2013). These attempts are not always successful, but many of those who seek treatment do survive the aftermath of an affair.

Therapists do have different perspectives in treating couples who have experienced an affair. Brown (2013) views affairs as the result of interactions between spouses. It has been noted throughout this course that infidelity sometimes disrupted even so-called happy marriages and that research indicated that unhappiness was not necessarily a predicate for infidelity.

Most family therapists work with the couple together as the primary approach. However, in cases of an ambivalent or a severely agitated partner, the therapist may suggest some individual therapy sessions (AAMFT, 2016) Treatment can be confusing and difficult for couples— the manner in which couples recover or uncouple after an affair depends on various factors including each partner’s commitment to healing the relationship, cultural values and norms, and the impact on children should they disband the relationship.

In the initial stages of therapy, the primary task is to establish safety and address painful emotions and traumatic symptoms. In essence, the therapist needs to manage and stabilize the emotional reaction to the affair and also obtain a clear picture of the circumstances surrounding the affair.

Johnson (2011) made several compelling arguments regarding the different motivations for affairs between genders. He debunked the classic viewpoint that men seek sex and women seek intimacy. He notes, “If it’s true, then why don’t men just masturbate and why don’t women just talk on the phone, or exchange love letters with their boyfriends?”

He notes that if it is just about sex for men, then why do they so often state that the mistress understands them and their own wife does not? He cautions against seeing affairs as moral struggles rather than as relational struggles. Though he does not call out Pittman by name, he criticizes the use of the terms “infidel” and “betrayed” to describe the involved and noninvolved spouses, which has been a hallmark of Pittman’s writings.

Johnson goes on to note, as does the work of Brown (2013), that the noninvolved spouse always plays a role in the affair. He also acknowledges that the noninvolved spouse is typically aware of the affair on some level. He also outlines the tendency of political wives, from the Kennedy family, to Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton, to stay with clearly unfaithful husbands due to secondary gains from their political and social positions, which makes it difficult to see them purely as victims of an infidel.

He encourages therapists to look beyond the surface of simple blame and the portrayal of couples as consisting of both a cheater and a virtuous partner. He cites not just politicians, but everyday people as examples, documenting stories of how spouses knew for years about affairs but chose not to mention it, for fear of disrupting the marriage. He relates other stories about spouses who deep down wanted out of a relationship, and who would set up their partner to have affairs so that they would have an excuse to walk away.

He related a tale of a woman, Pam, who encouraged her husband to vacation with a female friend that Pam knew was also going through a vulnerable and difficult time in her own life. Pam then played the role of the betrayed spouse when her husband and the other woman gave in to their impulses and embarked on an affair. Johnson uses these examples, some of them rather extreme, to drive home the point that therapists need to avoid moral judgements about affairs and to explore the function that the affair serves as a step toward healing in the relationship.

Emily Brown’s book, The Patterns of Infidelity and their Treatment, 2013, focused exclusively on affairs and intervening from a therapeutic standpoint. In the years that followed, other researchers added to the conceptual approaches of the treatment of infidelity and focused more intensely on affairs as an especially difficult and traumatic aspect of family therapy. When working with infidelity, therapists often use an integrative approach best suited to the couple. There are a number of modalities such as experiential and emotion-focused therapy that a therapist can use when treating infidelity. Regardless of the theoretical preference guiding the recovery process, treatment is rooted in a common-ground approach that emphasizes safety and forgiveness.

Once safety has been established and emotions aren’t as high, the therapist will ascertain what made the affair possible. Understanding the vulnerabilities for the infidelity and telling the story of the affair allows couples to move toward the final phase of therapy: forgiveness. Successful outcomes are closely linked to the development of empathy and hope in each partner — one of mutual exploration with a compassionate process (AAMFT, 2016).

Establishing and maintaining safety is a crucial part of treatment. Recovery cannot begin until contact with the affair partner is terminated. Stopping an affair does not just mean ending sexual intercourse. All personal discussions, coffee breaks and phone calls must also be stopped. When the affair partner is a co-worker, the contact must be strictly business: necessary or unplanned encounters must be shared with the spouse in order to rebuild trust (AAMFT, 2016).

Affairs as a secret Although the texts mentioned in this section were written decades ago, it is important to realize that the authors were recognized experts in the field of couple’s therapy. Their works contain information that no clinician should ever forget when working with couples— they are critical to keep in mind. One of the most frustrating aspects of couples counseling comes about when an affair is kept secret from the therapist.

Nichols (1988) discussed the phenomenon of secret keeping in marital therapy. He noted that oftentimes, the straying spouse kept the affair secret from their spouse as well as the therapist. Initially, when the couples already know of the affair, they do not always tell the therapist about it up front. Often, the couple waits until they feel enough trust with the therapist to reveal the information and work on the issue. The secret is usually kept by one person; in the worst-case scenario, the person wants the therapist to also keep the secret from the non-involved spouse.

Nichols declared this to be one of the worst situations for a therapist. He would typically let patients know from the outset, before such information was revealed, that he would not keep these types of secrets as a rule and had to consider them on a case by case basis. He noted that if the information revealed was about an old affair that had since ended, that the issue may not need to be revealed, stating, “What is to be gained by confronting them about a nonexistent situation? Similarly, what damage may be done to the spouse by learning about an affair of the past?”

In regards to being informed of a current affair, Nichols stated, “In my judgement, I consider it unethical and at best inequitable to continue to treat a couple while agreeing with one of the partners to withhold information about a current affair from the other for more than a brief period of time. Both dynamically and ethically belong to the marital couple, not to the therapist and one individual.”

The therapist or social worker may have a married client in individual counseling that is having a secret affair. She offers the following advice on handling this situation (Koenig, 2017).

Treatment considerations

We must be aware of our reaction when we are told of the affair — surprise, wariness, uncertainty, shock, helplessness, relief, disgust, envy, anger — and determine whether it is a moral response. We cannot help our clients without having a clear understanding of what we must work out for ourselves and how our reactions may benefit, or hinder, the therapy.

Although we are pledged to do no harm, we are not enforcers of the moral code except in specific cases of abuse, self-harm, or criminality. Whether we believe that it is acceptable or unacceptable to cheat on a spouse or a partner is irrelevant to a client resolving his or her relational dilemma. It is especially crucial to check our moral underpinnings to ensure that we are not fooling ourselves into believing that the client’s actions are fine with us when they really are anything but. We also must be aware that wishing to be unbiased will not necessarily make our feelings line up and follow a neutral course.

Another possible reaction to client infidelity is to feel pressured to fix the situation because we know that the spouse, client, or paramour (and maybe the entire family) will likely suffer because of the client’s betrayal. If we are uncomfortable with (or unaware of) this internal pressure, we may try to dissuade clients from having the affair or urge them to come clean with their partner. If we are out of touch with our own anxiety, anger, impatience, or helplessness, we may encourage clients to fix the situation quickly so that we can regain our clinical equilibrium. These are all natural responses. Ultimately, however, they do not benefit clients.

If practitioners have personal experiences with infidelity, it may stir up strong internal reverberations within them that make it difficult to remain in the present and stay focused on their clients. Practitioners may attempt to prevent clients from making the mistakes they made or, alternately, inducing them to enjoy guilty pleasures enjoyed— or wish they had enjoyed. Practitioners may want to rush in and save the client or the marriage; or they may feel so powerless that they fail to take the appropriate steps to untangle the situation. Also, if a practitioner has unresolved feelings about the impact a parental affair had on his/her life, these feelings may need to be resolved before the practitioner can help the client.

The situation is made more difficult when the client is in an abusive relationship or marriage. It has been said that there are different kinds of extramarital affairs: the ones that lead an individual out of abuse and into love and caring stand apart from those that are mere dalliances, sexual attractions, or unconscious distractions from unaddressed marital difficulties or intrapsychic problems. Certainly, an argument can be made that a client who chooses being treated well over being treated poorly is moving toward health.

The best stance for therapists to take is to encourage clients to explore all their feelings about the affair and their marriage or partnership, as well as to help them handle these intense emotions. The better the therapist is at identifying and tolerating varying and contradictory feelings, the easier it is for clients to manage their own. During the process of moving toward ending either the marriage or the affair, the client is likely to be overwhelmed. That is when our objectivity, patience, neutrality, gentle exploration, compassion, and empathy are our most valuable assets.

A comprehensive approach

One of the most comprehensive studies completed on a conceptual model of interventions aimed at couples was done by Snyder, Baucom, and Gordon (2016). This study drew from the treatment models of forgiveness and trauma recovery, as well as insight-oriented therapy and cognitive- behavioral therapy. The steps are outlined here as a general approach to treating affairs.

In any type of intervention, the authors noted several considerations before working therapeutically with couples. The first consideration is psychopathology. People with antisocial behaviors or narcissism present a special challenge in therapy. When this occurs, therapists must inform the person’s partner about the implications of these personality traits and how they put the marriage at risk for subsequent affairs. The partner of the person with these traits needs to understand that their spouse may “believes he or she is above social norms and mores… particularly if she or he is not remorseful or is inordinately defensive about the current affair.”

The second consideration is what the authors call “comfort with affect.” In couples who dislike expressing a lot of negative emotions and do not feel comfortable displaying anger, resentment, frustration or other such emotions, they may just quickly move into forgiveness and want to skim

35 over the real work of identifying the underlying causes for the affair. Therapists must create a safe place for this negative affect to come out so that couples can resolve their conflicts and move on.

The third consideration concerns the couple’s level of commitment to the process. Therapists must realize that ambivalence in the early stages of treatment is not a sign that someone is not committed to the long-term success of the marriage; rather, sometimes a person must transition through that ambivalence to reach a point where s/he is ready to move forward. However, some people have a deep-seated fear of commitment due to the avoidant attachment style discussed earlier. This avoidant attachment style will often require intensive individual therapy to prevent it from keeping the person from sabotaging the recovery process.

The last item is for the clinician to consider the pattern of affair that the couple has experienced. Obviously, an emotional and physical affair is more difficult to overcome than a one-night stand or a brief fling. Furthermore, a first-time affair is a much different scenario to overcome than is an affair that is one in a series of affairs.

The treatment approach outlined by the authors covers specific stages:

Stage 1: Addressing the impact of an affair Assessment The authors recommend that therapists hold a conjoint session to gather information about the couple’s romantic history, what events were taking place before the affair, how the affair became known, how the affair is impacting the couple, and their current weaknesses and strengths.

Therapists also complete individual sessions with evaluations of the couple’s families of origin and how these origins impact their views of marriage, their intentions regarding the marriage, as well as mental health issues that may need intervention — particularly if an individual is suicidal. The therapist should explain an important issue regarding confidentiality at this point: the therapist must make it clear that any information that comes up in the individual sessions will

not be withheld from the other partner. However, how this information is disclosed is done in consultation with the individual.

At the end of the initial assessment, a clinician should provide a couple with three things: • A basic overview of why and how the affair came about; • A current assessment of what problems a couple has currently and why they are occurring; and • A treatment plan.

Therapeutic goals There are several other therapeutic goals at this stage: setting boundaries; self-care; time-out and venting; discussing the affair; and dealing with flashbacks.

Setting boundaries The first goal is to set boundaries. Therapists must help to restore a sense of safety to the marriage, which can be difficult if a high level of conflict exists. The couple is encouraged to limit how and when they discuss the affair. This is to control the negative emotional impact and unproductive arguing that can typically occurs when the affair is brought up over and over. Otherwise, due to the tense and often hostile atmosphere that results, couples often find that the conflict about the affair spills over into all areas of the relationship. An example of this could be a couple who had no real issues in agreeing on child rearing suddenly finds themselves arguing about disciplining their children.

Another boundary issue is the interaction with the third party. If the third party is a coworker it may not be possible to avoid that person. The couple may agree that seeing the third party is unavoidable, but having lunch together is unacceptable. The rebuilding of trust is key in the process: couples need to establish and follow these boundaries.

Some clinicians are adamant that an affair must end before a couple can be in treatment. Baucom et al. (2011), however, noted that it is common for an affair to not necessarily over when the couple enters therapy. It may seem to be a straightforward condition of therapy to have the

involved spouse end the relationship immediately and then move forward with the necessary therapeutic interventions.

However, it is not that simple in many cases. The involved spouse is oftentimes receiving real emotional and physical gratification from the affair and is ambivalent about completely letting go, especially as s/he is aware that the marriage is in disarray and there is little, if any, feelings of support and love. The involved party knows that the marriage is in serious danger of failing, and they may be ending the affair for a marriage that may not make it anyway.

The authors caution clinicians against pushing the involved spouse too hard, which of course may be encouraged by the noninvolved spouse. The authors note, “Demanding that the participating partner terminate the outside affair relationship immediately and completely may prematurely precipitate that partner's decision to end both the therapy and their marriage.”

Certainly, the affair will cause issues in the treatment of the couple, but rather than demanding the affair end, the authors suggest that the therapist follows a three-step process: • Promote the participating partner's agreement to limit or to suspend involvement with the outside person on an intermediate basis; • Construct a tentative timeline for reaching a more permanent decision about whether to end the outside relationship; • Assist both partners in defining specific ground rules for how they will interact with each other, as well as with others outside their relationship.

In most cases, the noninvolved spouse is not going to be happy with the involved spouse’s ongoing involvement with the outside relationship. The clinician must work carefully with the couple to guide them through this difficult situation. The therapist should try to help the couple reach an agreement of what is acceptable and what is not with the third party.

Self-care In order for the couple to be able to take care of themselves in the aftermath of the affair, they must care for themselves physically and spiritually, as well as seek out and utilize various forms of social support.

Venting and time-out It is crucial for the therapist to help the couple come up with a plan to walk away from each other when tensions in an argument become too intense. Therapists can help couples to develop a plan that works for their situation and to use the time-out constructively as a tool to truly assist them in calming down.

Discussing the impact of an affair The authors note that a noninvolved spouse has a real need to let the involved spouse know how s/he feels about the affair and what kind of impact it has had on him or her. However, the noninvolved spouse can take this to the next level and use it to try to punish the involved spouse. The involved spouse often has his/her own feelings of resentment and blame toward the noninvolved spouse that precipitated the affair, and is likely to use these feelings as a defense against the anger the noninvolved spouse directs at them. The couple then gets caught in a cycle of blame and anger. The therapist has the task at this stage to help the couple understand this cycle and the destructiveness involved with it. The couple is encouraged to write letters, which they first share with the therapist. The therapist then proceeds to present them to the spouses as part of the therapeutic process.

Flashbacks Flashback are a common occurrence in the process of recovering from an affair. The triggering event can range from a chance encounter with the third party to an old receipt for a hotel room found in a jacket months after the affair ended. It can also be subtle, in which a current, seemingly innocent, behavior triggers memories of the affair. The therapist should prepare the couple for the strong chance that some trigger will occur and instruct the couple on how to cope. The primary goal is to help the couple understand that they need to separate memories from

current reality. The feelings aroused by a flashback need to be understood as a trigger of past emotions, not as a reflection of the current state of the relationship.

Stage 2: Examining content Stage two contains a critical therapeutic task to help the couple understand what led to the affair. This stage is usually the longest part of the treatment process and is where couples can determine if the factors leading up to the affair are situational issues that can be solved— or are more fundamental differences that may lead them to decide that it is best to end the relationship.

The four areas involved are: • Issues with communication or spending enough time together; • Outside issues such as work stress, issues with extended family or money; • The involved spouse and his or her issues with marriage in general; and • The basic issues related to the noninvolved spouse as the clinician must help both parties to distinguish between blaming a noninvolved spouse for an affair, and understanding the role that each party played in setting the stage for the conditions of the affair to have occurred.

The skilled therapist will work with the couple according to their communication skills and ability for insight. Some couples can discuss these issues well with limited guidance from the therapist. Some couples are unable to hear the other’s story and will require the therapist to do more interpreting and stating of feelings for each partner. Therapists should aim to help each party reach a greater level of understanding for each other’s position.

Stage 3: Moving on At this juncture in therapy, the couple needs to continue working on the mutual story of the affair, how it occurred, and the factors mentioned in previous section which played a role in the affair. Letter writing is again encouraged: the couple writes another set of letters to each other with increased understanding of the many factors that were involved in the affair. Not every couple can work out the situation enough to reconcile. In some cases, reconciliation is not

40 possible, particularly if some factors leading to the divorce cannot be mitigated. It may be healthier for one or both of them to end the relationship.

Forgiveness is also an important aspect of this stage. At this point, even if couples decide not to reconcile, the therapist should still encourage the couple to continue to work on reaching a point of increased understanding and forgiveness so that they can move on with their lives. If a couple is moving toward reconciliation, the components that led to the affair— such as work stress or the strain of caring for aging parents— are addressed. Ways to prevent these factors from harming the relationship are discussed.

The approach outlined by Baucom et al. (2011) provides a good general model for treating affairs. However, other researchers have worked with certain types of affairs that have different elements involved that require special types of interventions, as they are particularly difficult to work with. Two of these types of affairs relate to sexual addiction, and what Emily Brown labels the “split-self affair.”

Treating couples with sexual addiction Carnes (2013) discusses that the person identified as a sex addict needs to be managed in a specific way during the couples therapy process. Typically, without appropriate clinical intervention, an addict will engage in what she calls the “staggered disclosure.” She noted that the addict will initially: • Deny everything; • Disclose what they think they can get away with; • Disclose a bit more; • Get confronted as more comes out; • Disclose all.

This pattern is not linear, and the addict will typically go back and forth and repeat some of these steps. Carnes noted that this pattern is very hard on the sex addict’s spouse, who develops even greater mistrust of the addict during this time. The spouse is told by the addict that in effect, “I

am really telling you everything. Then more surfaces. No, now I am really telling you everything.”

The spouse never knows what to believe and always suspects that there is more behind the story. Carnes favors a structured approach to disclosure after working with an addict at length in his/her own recovery process, in order to reach a point where the addict is ready to fully disclose the extent of their behaviors.

Carnes characterizes the spouse of a sex addict as dealing with tremendous issues of guilt and shame, fearful of others knowing about the sex addict’s secret life, and helping the sex addict to keep the behaviors a secret. Spouses of the addict also blame themselves. They may believe if they were more supportive, more attractive or more sexual, that the addict would not engage in these behaviors.

However, in some cases, the spouse will be so angry that s/he will share the stories with others to shame the sex addict; although the spouse almost always regrets this later. Carnes encourages couples to be discreet and to disclose the information only to selective people who will support the recovery process.

Stages of recovery Carnes further describes the recovery process as a mixture of couple and individual work — for both members of the couple.

The developing stage The developing stage is the stage in which the partner is either totally unaware of the addict’s behaviors or suspects the behaviors but has gone into denial, does not trust his/her gut instincts, has minimized the behaviors as not really very important, sought couples therapy but did not address the sexual issues, or even joined in the sexual behaviors.

Crisis/decision-making stage In the crisis stage/decision-making stage, the spouse realizes the depths of the addict’s behaviors, usually after a serious event that exposes the addict and forces the spouse out of his/her denial. The spouse seeks information by either snooping or asking questions. Additionally, the spouse begins therapy or attends twelve-step groups, forcing the addict to go to treatment, and begins thinking about, or starts filing for, divorce. During this time, if the addict is in treatment, the therapist facilitates a full disclosure process.

Shock stage In the shock stage, the spouse now knows and is obsessed with thinking about what has happened; s/he feels victimized, angry, numb, very distrustful of the addict and fears that the addict will slip back into old behaviors. The spouse also typically demands that the addict is held accountable and can often feel self-righteous. A spouse in the shock stage spends a great deal of time trying to make sense of the addict’s behaviors.

Grief/ambivalence stage In the grief and ambivalence stage, feelings of loss for what used to be, depression, more focus on the spouse and less on the partner, and ambivalence about the relationship occur.

The repair stage The repair stage involves making a decision about the relationship. It also involves an increased understanding of the role played by both parties in the situation, setting boundaries, increased emotional stability, and working on issues from the family of origin.

Growth stage In the growth stage, feelings of being a victim lessen. The focus moves to other areas of life, rather than just on the addiction. An acknowledgement that the process has actually had some positive outcomes for growth and awareness is made.

Carnes points out that these stages are not linear—they can go backwards and forwards. In addition, someone with a history of trauma or of underlying psychiatric issues may have a harder time recovering from the issues involved in the process.

The split-self affair Many names given to split-self affairs in research literature including a double-life affair or a divided-self affair. In the split-self affair, marriage must work for the sake of appearances, and function because they avoid the difficult work of nurturing a loving, emotional connection (Dashaw, 2017b).

Secrets, lies and deception are the basis of the split-self affair; the involved partner is invested in total secrecy. The key idea of the split-self affair is that the involved partner has arranged his life so that he needs both partners, but there is a distinct division of labor. His spouse is responsible for maintaining his social standing, reputation, and sense of orderliness. His affair partner offers love, intimacy, eroticism and a restoration of his vitality.

Dashaw notes the split-self affair is essentially a mid-to-late life phenomenon. Split-self affairs occur in the 40s through 60s, not young marrieds. Empty nests are a fertile breeding ground for taking stock, evaluating options, and frankly, constructing convenient arrangements.

It’s not often discussed, but male power and patriarchy make split-self affairs possible. The lack of investment in addressing marital concerns, emotional disconnection over time, and a refusal to choose—because they do not have to—keep these men stuck in a fragmented self that can last for decades with serial, long-term affair partners.

The involved is usually a man and the wife is distraught. She ultimately believes that her husband will choose her. The third party will cling to the belief that the man is going to leave his wife. Oftentimes, the wife and the mistress will engage in what Brown (2013) describes as “a waiting game, both tugging at the betraying partner with occasional well-mannered shots at each other.”

Brown notes that most therapists really do not know how to intervene with this type of affair. She takes a similar approach to Baucom et al (2011) in that being adamant that the involved spouse ends the affair immediately usually backfires and leads to the involved spouse leaving therapy.

Brown explains that the roots of the split-self affair begin in childhood, where the involved party is taught to do what is right—regardless of how this affects them emotionally.

According to Dashaw, a pattern of benign neglect became what they expected from life due to unfulfilled needs in childhood. They often had parents who were so chaotic that they fixated on having a “perfect” life. Over time, their adult selves stuffed so many feelings down that they “split” into two parts: the perfect family man, the perfect beloved.

As a child, this individual struggled between doing what made them happy and doing what made others happy— such as acting as a parent to one’s own emotionally needy parent.

Brown cites the example of Steve who had an alcoholic, unpredictable mother and a largely absent father. Steve never felt he got much attention from his parents. Steve gained attention from teachers and others by being a people pleaser: earning good grades and then as an adult, performing well in a demanding job. None of these things gave Steve any emotional benefits, but he did get attention for being a dutiful and responsible person. Steve married a woman who was nice but not very emotional.

He subsequently began an affair with a woman much like his mother — an alcoholic and an emotionally intense person. Throughout this relationship, Steve had his long-suppressed emotional side awakened. In addition, it presented a chance for him to symbolically “save” his mother. Brown believes that the split-self affair is not about being torn between two relationships; rather, it is about the internal split between a person’s rational and emotional sides. The problem is not which partner to choose: it is the internal split. Healing the internal split is essential to resolving the situation. Until the rational and emotional selves come together and are

45 owned, any decision about ending the marriage or the affair is likely to be reversed (Brown, 2013).

Integrating the split-self The therapeutic task is for the involved partner to clarify his agenda. The involved partner benefits from owning his decision to stay or to go. In discernment counseling, the involved partner comes to fully appreciate the sacrifices that his decision requires. If he decides to leave, he honors the feelings of his spouse and is open to hearing her pain and grief. This also offers clarity and transparency to his partner (Dashaw, 2017b).

If the involved partner decides to stay and work on his marriage, he often benefits from concurrent individual therapy, particularly in processing his grief in losing his affair partner.

Brown notes that the person engaging in this type of affair is likeable, easy to work with, and is typically very controlled and calm. However, the therapist cannot be tempted to take the easy route with this client and must instead confront him and persist that he taps into his emotional side.

Brown goes on to state that this type of therapy is long-term and requires a great deal of individual therapy. She warns therapists to be prepared for the involved spouse to move in with the third party, then change his mind and return home to the noninvolved spouse. She encourages therapists to avoid getting caught up in the moves and the ensuing drama; instead, continue to focus on the individual’s therapeutic need to resolve the split between the rational and emotional parts of himself.

Initially, the couple will not understand any of these dynamics. The involved spouse will usually ask for help in choosing the outside partner or the spouse. Brown outlines the therapy involved as requiring both an examination of the person’s past to understand the dynamics that led him to have the split between the emotional and rational selves, and then subsequently to heal this split. She acknowledges that it is difficult to move the involved spouse past general statements about his feelings and to get him to report real emotions. A good family history is vitally important and

she suggests having family members help provide the information, if possible. In gathering the history, she guides the therapist to ask questions to elicit emotions that the involved spouse felt at key moments—such as when someone important died or when his parents got a divorce— and how he dealt with these emotions.

If the therapist can work with the involved spouse to the point where he can express emotions, acknowledge these emotions and begin to be honest about them (even if the emotions are not received positively by others), then the involved spouse is ready to discuss the affair openly with his spouse.

At this point, the split-self person will often choose to end the affair; many individuals benefit from living alone. If there is a willingness to continue in therapy, individuals can begin to learn to make their own choices, based on what they need and feel— rather than seeking to please others. Individuals may take up new hobbies or explore new careers. Brown believes that to heal their splits fully, most people require two years of therapy.

Brown also discusses the need to work with the noninvolved spouse. Typically, the noninvolved spouse wants to make the marriage work and the willingness to wait and fight for the marriage does not make sense to friends and family — even to some clinicians. Brown notes that some clinicians encourage the noninvolved spouse to file for divorce and not wait while the involved spouse goes back and forth and acts ambivalent.

The noninvolved spouse will require individual work as well. Brown states that a noninvolved spouse may typically have a history of abandonment and loss in his or her life, and the outlining of a family history can help provide this insight.

The noninvolved spouse typically presents as obsessed with the affair. Part of her individual work is to encourage her to focus more on inner processes. It is often difficult for the noninvolved spouse to see what role she played in the affair. The noninvolved spouse will usually see the affair as the other person’s problem and not understand that she also needs to do a great deal of individual therapy.

Brown believes that conjoint therapy should only begin once each of the spouses has reached a point where they have worked on their internal splits and have made a decision to work on the marriage.

In conclusion, Dashaw notes that integrity and honesty are virtues that resonate with a healthy, masculine self-image. The split-self-involved partner is fraught with turmoil, self-loathing, and a fear of discovery. Convenience has a price; neglect takes a toll on intimate relationships. Split- self affairs are challenging to recover from, but they offer a tremendous opportunity for growth and self-development.

Cyber-affairs

Phone sex, sexting, instant messaging, chat rooms, live web cams, online dating sites, online virtual worlds, exchanging photos and live videos, not to mention Skype, Facebook, and Instagram. A cyber-affair may involve visits to intimate chat rooms or filming mutual masturbation via web cams.

There are many options for a partner who is motivated to engage in a non-physical sexual relationship outside of marriage. Cyber cheating has rapidly grown to be a leading cause for divorce over the last decade. These activities may start out innocently, but the friendship becomes flirtatious and eventually becomes a full blown online relationship that interferes with his or her marriage.

An article published by the APA notes that these affairs can be just as devastating to the other spouse — triggering insecurity, anger, and jealousy (Smith, 2011).

Internet affairs pose an interesting situation for couples (and for couples therapists) to deal with. The availability of these types of affairs pose an incredible amount of opportunity for both men and women to become involved in interactions that typically involve sexually suggestive messages and pictures being exchanged— even mutual masturbation through webcams. Some

participants deny these behaviors are really affairs because there is no physical contact and they never actually meet one another. However, many of these affairs have an emotional connection.

Also, even when the cyber affair is purely sexual, the impact on one’s spouse can be just as devastating as an in-person affair. Schneider, Weiss & Samenow (2012) also reported that engaging in online affairs and other cybersex activities cause a person’s partner to feel insecure, in need of help for the relationship, and even to exhibit feelings of trauma— just as in a “real” physical affair.

The Internet has opened up a whole new world of infidelity. This is difficult for some individuals to understand in because it occurs in the cyber world. It shares some characteristics with traditional infidelity because it is secretive, outside of the committed relationship, sexual, and possibly emotional in nature. It also damages interactions between the primary couple and negatively impacts the intimacy in the relationship. This is based on the belief that anything that is deliberately hidden from a partner can create emotional distance that could present a serious problem in the relationship.

The involved person who engages in Internet infidelity develops a pattern of lying about the activity, decreases communication with the noninvolved spouse, decreases sexual activity with the spouse, and devotes less time to the family in general. It becomes a distraction to everyday issues. Atwood notes that it is much easier to go online and find emotional support from strangers than it is to face real issues in a marriage. People who participate in cybersex fall into three categories: recreational, at-risk, and compulsive. The compulsive user can be obsessive; at times, this progression occurs rapidly.

Cyber-flirting is the first level of cybersex. Users may chat online by using an instant messaging platform. Cybersex involves the exchange of sexually explicit conversations and videos or pictures. For some, this cybersex takes the place of sex with their spouse. However, at this stage, most users believe that it is not affecting their relationship with their spouse because it is “not real” (Smith, 2011). Cyber-affairs result when the two, or more, people involved begin to have

an emotional connection. They may spend hours chatting back and forth or writing emails. They may speak on the phone and it may even progress to meeting in person.

The cyber world easily promotes these kinds of affairs for several reasons:

Cyber-infidelity is anonymous. The privacy of these forums allow people to open up to others with little fear of getting caught. It is also easy to pretend to be different by hiding behind a facade that would not be available in a face-to-face exchange in a bar, for example (Smith, 2011).

Cyber activity involves a great deal of projection. Users can easily project an ideal self from a computer screen and others can see or believe what they want about the other person. Indeed, “the other person is not seen or heard; they are a shadowy figure, a screen, or backdrop onto which any variety of transference reactions can be launched.”

Those with intimacy issues are attracted to cyber-sex and cyber-flirting. The basic issues that keep them from fully connecting with their spouse makes the seemingly quick and easy intimacy of cyber relationships attractive.

The tendency for people to engage in triangulated relationships as a way to reduce tension and anxiety within a relationship is a well-known phenomenon. For some people, the object of the triangle may be children or a job. The lure of the Internet is that it offers a 24/7 way to reach out to others to flirt anonymously and achieve this type of tension reduction in an almost effortless way, as well as to greatly increase a person’s ability to engage in these triangles.

Problems or frustrations that would normally be discussed with a spouse become easier to share with other users behind a computer screen. When a couple lacks communication skills, it is much easier to reach out and chat on instant messaging and emails to complain than it is to have a face- to-face encounter with a spouse to work on issues (Stritof, 2017).

One of the most prevalent issues in working with couples who present in therapy is for the noninvolved spouse to question the grounds for their concerns. The spouse may question the legitimacy of the affair because it takes place in a virtual atmosphere. Many times, the involved spouse encourages the noninvolved spouse to view the cyber-infidelity as make believe or not real. The involved person may accuse their spouse of having an overactive imagination or even of being unbalanced. As the involved person become more involved with the cyber world, s/he often ignores the children, withdraw from family activities, and disengages from sexual activity with his/her spouse (Stritof, 2017).

Cyber affairs require the same type of therapy as “real” affairs but with a couple of important distinctions. First, the therapist must not brush off the cyber-affair as any less real or damaging to a marriage than as with the physical affair. Noninvolved spouses feel betrayed, angry, and suffer the same loss of self-esteem as do spouses in other types of affairs. Additionally, in treating the affair, the therapist needs to work on the typical elements of “real” affairs — with an exploration of the underlying causes, opening up communication, and rebuilding trust.

Conclusion Multiple factors influence a person’s decision to enter into an extramarital affair. Identifiable demographic characteristics and personality traits influence an individual’s decision to engage in infidelity as well. Cyber-sex and online affairs are a relatively new area of knowledge for therapists, and the field’s understanding is still rather limited. However, therapists must treat these affairs with the same level of seriousness as they would an in-person affair. Therapists will continue to encounter situations that are new and enter uncharted territory as the years go on. Individual situations will continue to challenge the long-held beliefs and practices in therapy that are related to infidelity. Therapists will need to reflect and reconcile their personal beliefs and biases about infidelity to properly treat individuals and/or couples.

A number of therapy modalities may apply to individual and couples therapy, depending upon the unique needs of the individuals, the type, and the duration of the affair.

The work of numerous researchers can provide a solid framework for therapists working with couples facing this very difficult situation.

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The Many Faces of Infidelity: Exploring the Causes and Treatment of Extramarital Relationships Final Exam

1. An affair may revive a dull marriage is an example of a/an: a. Therapeutic intervention. b. Marital legacy. c. Myth about affairs. d. Bowen’s family theory.

2. Women are having affairs at a rate than grew almost _____ percent from 2000 to 2010. a. 10. b. 1. c. 75. d. 40.

3. A recent study found that______likely to pursue affairs for emotional reasons or sexual reasons. a. Men only. b. Men and women are equally. c. Women only. d. Was not a factor.

4. ______seeking plays a role in infidelity for both genders. a. Romance. b. Attachment. c. Thrill. d. Sensation.

5. Being employed outside the home led to more affairs for ______. a. Men only. b. Both sexes. c. Women only. d. Was not a factor.

6. Individual levels of sexual interest, sensation seeking, level of inhibition, and overall attachment styles play a role in_____. a. Who does and does not have an affair. b. Recovery from an affair. c. Sexual response cycles. d. Overall communication styles.

7. Conflict avoidance and intimacy avoidance are types of: a. Affairs. b. Love styles. c. Communication. d. Courtship.

8. A split-self affair usually _____. a. Is short term. b. Starts in friendship. c. Is not very emotionally involving. d. Results in little guilt for the straying spouse.

9. Loss of control, loss of time and efforts to stop are all part of ______. a. Sexual addiction. b. Split-self affairs. c. Infidelity. d. Compulsive affairs.

10. For couples in treatment for the impact of infidelity, reconciliation is the goal of therapy what percentage of the time? a. 10-20 percent. b. 50-60 percent. c. 75-80 percent. d. 1-5 percent.

11. Forgiveness and trauma recovery are two components of the therapeutic model attributed to: a. Brown. b. Vossler & Moller. c. Snyder, Baucom, Gordon. d. None of these.

12. In______the involved partner comes to fully appreciate the sacrifices that their decision requires. a. Freudian therapy. b. Discernment counseling. c. Behavior therapy. d. Gestalt therapy.

13. Split-self affairs are challenging to recover from, but they offer a tremendous opportunity for____. a. Sexual satisfaction. b. Marital stability. c. Growth and self-development. d. Marriage or relationship exit.

14. ______has/have rapidly grown to be a leading cause for divorce over the last decade. a. Cyber cheating. b. Split-self-affairs. c. Office affairs. d. Emotional affairs.

15. In the cyber world, problems or frustrations that would normally be discussed with a spouse become easier to share with ______. a. Coworkers. b. Extended family. c. Support groups. d. Other users behind a computer screen.