Patterns Of Infidelity And Their Treatment

Emily M. Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134947171
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Conseil en psychothérapie

The new edition of this highly-regarded book includes comprehensive discussion of the nature of an affair and the five types of affairs and their underlying dynamics. The author addresses issues regarding revealing the affair, management of the consequences, rebuilding, and treating an unmarried third party, as well as the host of complex issues regarding children and custody arrangements. New material for the second edition includes cybersex and the effects of new technology on fidelity in marriage; the effects of managed care on treatment; marriage to the third party; and a new chapter on affairs and violence.

Part
I
	Patterns of Infidelity

Love and betrayal, those powerful and human themes, are most dramatic in the extramarital affair. Affairs and the emotions they arouse have been described over the centuries in literature, history, and religion. Works of art depict scenes of the unfaithful. Modern tales are told in movies, song, and other media. Both old and new tales recount great passions and deadly secrets, deep love and idyllic illusions, pain and punishment, and in some cases redemption and healing. With such great drama, it is no wonder that now, as in the past, affairs capture everyone’s interest.

Our interest in affairs is not just dramatic appreciation. Our personal stake runs high. Family is where we have a feeling of belonging, whether we like our family members or not. Anything that disrupts the family threatens our sense of belonging. Affairs threaten the structure of the family and thus our very basis of belonging. An affair arouses and fuels our fear of abandonment, a feeling so basic and primitive it goes to the core of our being. Pointing a finger at those who have an affair seems at times to be a way of saying “It can’t happen to me.”

Simmel (1950) asserts: “Existence rests on a thousand premises which the single individual cannot trace and verify … but must take on faith. Our modern life is based … upon the faith in the honesty of the other. … If the few persons closest to us lie, life becomes unbearable” (p. 313).

For the spouse, the betrayal seems unbearable. But for the unfaithful partner, the affair is an aphrodisiac. The aura of romance and intrigue is compelling, especially when reality feels barren or boring. Affairs promise so much: an opportunity to pursue dreams that have been dormant, a chance to come alive again and the hope of connecting with someone who truly understands. Their hidden promise is pain.

Our Society and Affairs: The Attraction and the Threat

Despite the prevalence of affairs, as a society we remain both intrigued and threatened. The idea of an affair conjures up romantic fantasies and dreams of forbidden sexual desires, along with fears of betrayal and emotional devastation. As a society we have developed various methods for minimizing these threatening feelings. Our laws are a method of inducing people to stay within accepted boundaries of behavior. The heavy punishment exacted, until recently, of adulterers in our divorce courts was intended to reduce the number of affairs, thus lessening the threat. Religion inveighs against the sin of adultery. Again this is a dual thrust. Religion attempts to prevent adultery and, failing that, to place the offenders outside the social boundaries; to distance “them” from “us.” When the adulterer is a minister and thus charged with keeping moral order, our righteous outrage at the betrayal of that charge is even stronger.

The approach to affairs presented in this book is specific to our culture and to those cultures that are most like ours. Culture shapes the particular ways in which personal issues are expressed. Of most importance however, is the meaning of the affair within the particular marriage. The culture provides the context, but specific meanings are learned in the family of origin.

Double Messages

Ours is a society that values marriage, but that has a mixed heritage and great ambivalence regarding sexuality. On one hand, adultery continues to be used in our legal system as a tool for administering blame and punishment. At the same time the entertainment world creates a continual stream of movies and television shows that use an affair as the major story line. Pornography is hated, yet it is big business. Arguments abound over the line between art and pornography. One branch of the federal government designs a National Survey of Health and Sexual Behavior, but “politicians, federal health officials and bureaucrats at the Office of Management and Budget … have frozen the study in committees, conferences and councils” (Specter, 1990, p. Bl). American families constantly receive and transmit mixed messages about sexuality and about affairs.

The movies too, convey dual messages about affairs. They invite us into the fantasy then help us control our anxiety about the affair. Movies that have an affair as part of the story line tend to be either comedies or murder mysteries. In the murder mysteries, the bad guy gets punished, getting the message across once more that it is the outsider, the bad guy, not us, who has an affair. Comedies, such as “Hannah and Her Sisters” make light of the threat: if we can laugh at the affair, it is not so threatening.

Double Standards

In addition to the duality within our culture about affairs, the double standard pertains as well. In “Fatal Attraction” (Lyne, 1987), Alex, the unmarried lover, dies, while Dan, the straying partner, ends up in a warm embrace with his wife. (Of course therapists know that this miracle cure for the Conflict Avoidance Affair will be short lived. If Dan and his wife are smart they will call for a therapy appointment soon.) If the straying partner was a woman and the unmarried lover was male, we would see a different ending. The husband would be a hero of sorts, and his cheating wife would be out in the cold.

Ellen Goodman (1998) contrasted the public’s response to Hillary Clinton’s efforts at health care reform and her public humiliation by the Bill and Monica scandal. Goodman speculates that perhaps Americans, “prefer a betrayed woman to an uppity woman” (p. A19).

The double standard also is alive in books such as The Rules (Fein & Schneider, 1996) which suggests it is the woman’s responsibility to keep her husband from straying. If he has an affair, she must somehow be at fault. Unfortunately, many women believe this, as do many of their husbands. TV talk shows hammer home the same message. Even when the host and the guests do not assume the man’s affair is the wife’s fault, many in the audience do. And if the woman has an affair, that’s her fault too.

Affairs in Other Cultures

Some societies view affairs quite differently than does ours. In a highly publicized trial in 1989 in New York, a man who had murdered his wife because she was having an affair, was sentenced to five years probation. He had recently immigrated from China, and testimony provided by an anthropologist indicated that “the Chinese hold marriage to be sacred and that a Chinese man could ‘reasonably be expected to become enraged’ upon learning of his wife’s Infidelity” (Yen, 1989, p. A3).

For years the Irish ruefully referred to affairs as the Irish divorce. It has been only since 1997 that divorce is an option in Ireland. Before then the Irish developed the alternative of long serious affairs, much like what we would call serial monogamy, but without the benefit of divorce or remarriage. (Of course the Irish were not strangers to other types of affairs.)

Melina Mercouri describes the Greek man as “A good friend and a good husband because, although he has Infidelity in his blood, he has his wife above all, and he always goes back to her” (Shearer, 1987, p. 19). In cultures where marriages are arranged, the union is based on political and economic factors, rather than the personal or emotional. Affairs then are a way to construct space for the personal within one’s life.

An Iranian man observed that in present day Iran, “Married people who commit adultery are generally given a chance to stop the affair. If they don’t, in some cases they are executed.” (Heavey, 1998, p. E10). In Pakistan, honor killings—women killed by a relative when they are judged to have shamed the family—occur at the approximate rate of 500 per year (Beattie, 1999).

The mistress system still continues in parts of the world. The wife and the children of the marriage have the husband’s name and whatever perks come with his name. The husband is entitled to have as many additional women and children as he can afford, provided they don’t usurp the wife’s status. Married women in these cultures who have an affair, or are even suspected of doing so, may pay with their lives. This is especially true in rural areas. In Africa, an important contributing factor to the out-of-control AIDS epidemic are the cultural mores that encourage men to have several wives.

In Japan only rich men could afford mistresses until recently because of the high cost of maintaining them (they were usually longterm.) Nowadays, many young girls are looking for easy money and are willing to accept brief liaisons in exchange for luxurious presents or money. Men’s affairs, especially those of high ranking officials, are viewed as normal. When Clinton’s affair with Monica surfaced, the talk among the Japanese was that Americans were overreacting and that all men in power are the same. “It’s no big deal,” so why not just accept it and forget about it? However an acclaimed Japanese filmmaker committed suicide after learning that a magazine was going to publish a story alleging he was having an affair (Sullivan, 1997). Maybe the most significant point is that affairs engender stronger feelings when they are close to home.

In times past, “Adultery was punished in many North American Indian tribes by cutting off the hair, amputating the ears, the lips, or the nose, and sometimes by beatings. In the Carolines [Caroline Islands], by contrast, the matter was settled with small gifts” (Mantegazza, 1935, p. 200). Other cultures had their own methods for dealing with sexual infidelity, many of which were physically punitive. Today’s spouses often fantasize about similar punishment for their straying partner.

Who has an Affair?

As you might imagine, accurate statistics on affairs are hard to come by. The secrecy that is intrinsic to an affair inhibits research as does the emotional freight carried by the topic. Judging from the available statistics, the incidence of affairs appears to be increasing, particularly among younger women who are now participating in affairs at a higher rate than their husbands (Lawson, 1988). However, there is a difference between early intent and later behavior. Using a British sample, Lawson also found that “over 90 percent of women and over 80 percent of men intended to remain sexually faithful at the point of their first marriage” (p. 69), and expected the same of their spouse. This decreased during marriage, so that about 53% of those still married to a first spouse at the time of the study believed in fidelity. However, 88% of remarried women strongly believed in fidelity. Only 57% of remarried men shared that belief.

Estimates of the incidence of affairs range from 16.3% of ever-married adults (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994) to 70% of all women (Hite, 1987). A large national study (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994) found that only 21% of the men and 12.8% of the women had participated in an affair. However, it is likely that many of the respondents have not yet had an affair but will have one in the future. And it’s certain that some others are not telling. Hite’s data, at the other end of the continuum, raises questions about reliability (Streitfeld, 1987).

A review of research on infidelity by Maggie Scarf (1987) indicates that about 55% of married men have affairs, and 45% of married women have affairs. Looking at these statistics in terms of the couple suggests that about 70% of marriages experience an affair at some point during the marriage. In a therapy practice, especially one focusing on issues of marriage and divorce, a very high rate of affairs is to be expected.

Buss (2000) seems to have the most believable estimates. Based on a number of studies, he states that, “Approximately 20 to 40 percent of American women and 30 to 50 percent of American men have at least one affair over the course of the marriage.” This is the rate for individuals. The number of marriages that experience an affair is higher. Thompson (1983) suggests it may be as high as 76%.

Salovey and Rodin (1985) found that 45% of the respondents to a survey on jealousy and envy admitted to an affair, although 72% considered monogamy very important and another 20% considered it important. This gap between behavior and belief is common for issues that carry a high emotional charge.

On an irreverent note, Jonathan Yardley (1988) notes that “The average American newsroom makes a rabbit hutch seem a model of monogamous placidity. To say this is not to endorse such behavior but to acknowledge its universality. Rabbits stray, and so do people; this is unfortunate and can have unhappy effects on the lives of those touched by it, but it is a manifestation not of malignity but of human fallibility” (p. D2).

For the most part, surveys provide conservative figures, based on what people are willing to reveal. Many people will not admit to an affair for fear of disapproval or negative repercussions, or because they have not fully acknowledged it to themselves, let alone their spouse. Some research designs work against honesty about infidelity, as when the possibility of a follow-up interview arouses fears that the spouse will learn of one’s affair in the process. In other studies many of those surveyed have not yet had an affair, but will at some future time, and thus the findings do not reflect lifetime rates. Reliability of the study also is affected by the number of participants who refuse to answer questions about affairs or drop out of the study.

Maybe the most accurate comment of all is that of social researcher Tom Smith of the University of Chicago: “There are probably more scientifically worthless ‘facts’ on extra-marital relations than on any other facet of human behavior” (Morin, 1994, p. A17).

Differences between Men and Women

Gender differences appear repeatedly in studies on infidelity. The participation, justifications, reactions, and outcomes for each type of affair are influenced by different expectations of men and women. Gender differences also mean that certain types of affairs are more common for men and others for women. Further complexity is added by the social changes of the last few decades in which expectations about life, love, and work, as a man or as a woman, have changed dramatically. Data from the 60s and 70s needs to be examined in the context of the sex role expectations for men and women which were prevalent at that time. Women coming of age in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s grew up with very different messages than those in earlier generations.

Until recently, married men were much more likely to have an affair than were their wives. (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebbhard, 1953; Thompson, 1983). Now the overall rate of participation is similar for men and women. However young married women are more likely to participate in an affair than are their husbands. Part of the change has to do with women’s sweeping move into the workplace and the resulting increase in their opportunities for an affair. Women however, differ from men in their use of such opportunities. Women who are happy in their marriages are unaware of opportunities for an affair. For men, opportunity and prior justification are predictive of an affair. (Glass & Wright, 1989). Not surprisingly, men still have more lovers than do women (Lawson, 1988).

Affairs come sooner in marriage than in the past according to Lawson’s (1988) study. Almost two thirds of the women and nearly half the men marrying for the first time in the 70s had an affair within the first five years of marriage. This was true for only one fourth of those who married before 1960. Younger women have affairs sooner than their husbands, while just the reverse is true for those married before 1960. Thus the younger marriages occurred in the context of the sexual freedom of the 60s and 70s.

Johnson’s 1970 study indicated that twice as many husbands as wives had an affair. However, only 29% of the women reported having an opportunity as compared to 72% of the men. When viewed in this manner, women in the study participated in affairs at a greater rate than did their husbands, and look rather similar to young wives today. Possibly opportunity is a more important variable for women than has been realized in the past.

The growing similarities between younger men and women contrast with the significant...