Affairs are marriages weapon of mass destruction and based on my dialogue with marital therapists across the U.S., is epidemic. Couples today are faced with a confusing array of messages from our culture that impact on our vulnerability toward extra-marital affairs. People are bombarded with conflicting suggestions about what constitutes satisfaction in a relationship as well as what it means to be a husband, wife or partner. Importantly, our notions about trust, fidelity and what we want out of life can present an agonizing dilemma as we navigate the challenges of marriage.
Expectations about marriage are confused and distorted. First, there is a pull to model our relationships after those we see on TV and films where excitement and romance and great sex is ever present and conflicts are resolved after 50 minutes. This intoxicating expectation about our relationships inevitably hits the wall of stress, frustration and the frenetic pace of running a household, raising a family and earning a living. When these expectations collide with reality, we mustn’t have found the “right” person” so the man or woman with whom we work on a challenging project, unencumbered by the stress in our lives that we put onto our spouse, becomes the focus of idealized romantic projection.
Our culture is also rife with entitlement. ” I want it all and I want it now,” is the American mantra. Or as one of my patients put it, “people today swim in the river of me.” Studies show that affluence,power, higher education and professions characterized by excitement and risk correlate with the frequency of extra-marital affairs. No wonder politics and the entertainment industry are hot beds of affairs. Daniel Akst in his recent book about American life, characterized our culture as “an all you can eat buffet offering sex, credit, calories and intoxicants.” Resisting such pressure would require a well developed self- awareness, a clarity of values and commitment to one’s partner. This is what psychotherapy and couple therapy teaches.
Furthermore, our commercial culture encourages impulsive decisions and behavior rather than the delayed gratification that is crucial for couples to flourish. The leading website community linking people who are seeking affair partners, has as it’s slogan, “because life is short.” So, what is the message? Go ahead and ruin your marriage. Don’t take time to work on improving your relationship. I can have it all and I can have it now is the message. Don’t settle for less.
Dr. Martin Luther King characterized American society as schizophrenic. My national dialogue with clinicians has revealed a distortion of American thinking that has made Dr. King’s commentary starkly evident.
Our culture has developed a disturbing ability to hold two seemingly opposite ways of thinking as acceptable. Examples abound: All men are created equal but this somehow does not apply to slavery. I love my country but hate the other half of it. We are all concerned about jobs in America but we all wear clothes made in foreign countries we put gas in our cars blind to the reality that we are giving money to countries that don’t like us. My wife and family are here but what I do in my “personal life” is over there.
This fractured logic provides the fuel that both initiates and drives infidelity. Affairs occur in a fragmented private reality, outside the umbrella of our usual awareness of risk, judgement, empathy as well as one’s family and spiritual values. This is what mental health practitioners refer to as dissociative thinking. Simply put, affairs occur in a hermetically sealed cognitive universe.
Interestingly, an affair becomes an intoxicating arena where one’s shadow self (in the words of Carl Jung), find expression. energized by the desperate passion of the forbidden and all that is missing in our lives. People experience themselves differently in this forbidden world of infidelity, describing themselves as more alive, younger, passionate with the illusion of being, “in charge finally.” Affairs have been described as “sex on steroids.” There is intriguing evidence that affairs stimulate a potent rush of biochemicals that activate the dopamine receptor sites, creating a cocaine like euphoria and sense of power. This raises the possibility that affairs may be ways of self-medicating for depression, stress or the loss of vitality that comes with aging.
.Sadly, there are few supports or models in our society for the competencies and resources necessary to establish and maintain healthy long-term relationships. Turn on the news or open a newspaper and we see few examples of conflict resolution, empathy, negotiation and collaborative problem-solving. The ability to see beyond one’s own view of the world and join with another is a capability that is crucial for marriage. Yet, our national landscape is barren of examples and models for people to learn from and admire.
How can couples protect themselves from the pull of our culture toward affairs? A detailed study that examined the predisposing factors for infidelity in marriage, found numerous triggers for affairs Conversely, the study also provides us with a beacon for how couples can prevent infidelity. While learning to resolve conflict is central for couples, integrating excitement and fun into a marriage is a deceptively simple protective activity as well as cultivating opportunities for emotional warmth, pleasure, and closeness. Softening the boundary between the excitement of life outside the home and the routine of running a household and family, is one way to preempt affairs.
Since changing our culture is not going to happen, establishing beacons that offer guidance and support for couples is a viable alternative. High profile programs, classes and ways of enhancing the availability of relationship counseling would tell American couples that you are the future of America.