Extramarital affairs are not recommended. They lead to various kinds of trouble and intense emotional pain. Often, one party reacts (clinically) much like those who have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following combat experiences, floods, earthquakes, and fires. However, in over twenty years of listening to and assisting individuals and couples who have endured this conflict, I have witnessed many marital “recoveries” and indeed, improvements following an affair. Are extramarital affairs guaranteed killers of marriage or any hope of future trust between the partners? Definitely not! In my experience, most marriages recover from the effects of an affair and when the issues are appropriately addressed, they “thrive”!
For individuals to be able to recover and thrive within their marriages, it is critical for BOTH INDIVIDUALS to examine the “whys and wherefores” of the affair. For the desirable “understanding, surviving and thriving” process to occur, it is important for the couple to get beyond the “faulting and blaming” stage as soon as feasible (although it is common and understandable that couples endure this stage for a while). It is critical that the individuals focus upon self-examination. This examination and the resulting clarity then can be followed by productive “enlightened” discussions about what these individuals know about themselves. They can then express what they want, need, and hope for, in the marriage going forward. These “individuals” then can begin to forge a contract and a relationship that is based upon mutually-defined and mutually-shared hopes, wants, needs, and values. They can review the “should” of their earlier terms and decide what is current and valid and what is…or always was…an illusion. When using the term “recovery” in regards to building an optimal marital contract for the future, it is important not to imply a “return” to previously undesirable, unsatisfying, and dysfunctional patterns of the previous marital years. An optimal marriage includes a complex contract which has important commitments. It is, however, important to remember that the parties are individuals, and they always will be, despite any romantic, legal, religious, or other implications. Thus, it is important for the individual to gain and maintain self-understanding and make a contract with terms and commitments that she/he can keep. It is difficult and ill-advised to make an agreement that ignores who the individual really is. Honest agreements and optimal marital contracts are based upon the principle the individuals “say what they mean and mean what they say”.
Extramarital affairs are complex, and the reasons they occur, and solutions to repair them, are plentiful. The stories told by the individuals are each very different, and paradoxically, they are much the same. Two things that are very common, however, are that the individuals lack self-understanding and they lack the courage and/or the ability to communicate effectively what they need and want. How can we expect from our partners to know what we do not understand about ourselves? How can we expect them to understand what we want, when we cannot articulate our needs and wants? How can we “grow” or “adjust” our relationships as time passes, when we do not have the courage to express our needs and wants over time? There are much better ways to go about individual and marital enlightenment than to “blow up a marriage and/or family” only then to find the courage to self-examine and speak honestly about what we need or want. The affair…and sometimes the “other party”… serves as a catalyst for these needed, albeit challenging, exchanges between the marital partners. An individual consultation with an appropriately-trained psychologist is a much better option. Countless times over my twenty-plus years of listening to and helping couples, “they” have said (and I have thought), “I wish we could have had these talks earlier”. It’s best to have these discussions and to make the adjustments before there is too much emotional “scar tissue”. Sometimes the emotional scar tissue is just too much, and/but for other enlightened couples, it a reminder of the critical fact that a healthy individual is far more capable of having a healthy and satisfying marriage.
D. Jerome Meers, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist
