How Affairs Start

Think of the love in a marriage as a campfire. There are actions that can be done to stoke the fire and make it hotter--those are Love Kindlers. There are actions that can be done that are like putting water on a fire--some are like dribbles out of a holey bucket, and some are like dumping a big old bucket of water on the fire. Those are Love Extinguishers. When two people first met there were no Love Extinguishers because they put forth their best image and the two were not sharing a home, bills, and chores yet. At the same time there were TONS of Love Kindlers. Think about it! People in love tend to spend a lot of time together; they talk to each other and get to know each other--and they actually stop and listen; they do fun things together like go bowling or take walks; they look good for each other and flirt.... See all those kindlers? And sure enough, the fire of love blazes and they get married.

Like all young couples they thought their love would "conquer all" and never even considered that one of them would cheat. Sure that happens to other people, but their marriage was different and special and it would never happen to them.

Then enter just a few Love Extinguishers.

The Loyal Spouse put the Disloyal Spouse through college so they could get ahead in life, and the Loyal Spouse always thought that his/her sacrifice would be paid back worth it "someday" when they were successful as a couple. Meanwhile, Disloyal Spouse worked and worked to climb the corporate ladder, thinking that he/she was "providing for the family" and doing it to get ahead. The Loyal Spouse began to be involved with their own college, work or activities and forgot to take time for Disloyal Spouse. In fact, when he/she did see Disloyal Spouse, he/she complained because Disloyal Spouse wasn't helping out with the shared household chores. And Disloyal Spouse also forgot to make time for him/her and began working longer and longer hours at work. Sometimes they didn't even see each other awake for DAYS...and when they did, one or the other of them had negative things to say. Maybe she's not a great money manager (or the opposite, a controlling penny-pincher); when he's home he'd rather sit in front of the TV or PC to veg out. They don't talk anymore...and the Love Extinguishers are dribbling on the fire. Then more Love Extinguishers are added--kids are born and there's even LESS time together; she gains some weight and he wear sweats; he yells at her about bills and she disrespects his job; he wants sex and she doesn't feel connected to him so she resents it. The Love Extinguishers are getting to be less like a drip and more like a downpour.

Right about then...enter stage left the Other Person. Other Person is a colleague at the Disloyal Spouse's office, a classmate in a college class, or an old romance from "way back when" found on Facebook. The Other Person has no Love Extinguishers because they are putting forth their best image. The Other Person is happy to hear from them--they dress up/look nice and wear cologne--whereas the Loyal Spouse is at home wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The Other Person knows all about work or the class...what he/she does...how he/she does it...what is hard about it...what is easy about it...what the Disloyal Spouse struggles with...and probably spends 8 hours a day with them--whereas the Loyal Spouse is bored hearing about work or school, has no idea how hard it is, and spends hardly any time with Disloyal Spouse. Pretty soon, the Disloyal Spouse starts talking to Other Person about a fight that he/she had with the Loyal Spouse the night before...and Other Person is understanding and takes their side. Then Disloyal Spouse starts going with the Other Person to work conferences or extra-curricular activities and kind of "seeks out" OP and sits by him/her at lunch. Soon, they are talking like teenagers at lunch--phoning each other on the cell phone "for work"--and emailing all night long. Part of the Disloyal Spouse is thrilled that someone else thinks they're neat! They are happy...and a little love zing of amphetamine hits their brain. Then they flirt a little and the Other Person flirts back! And pretty soon after that, one of them mentions that they have feelings for the other ... and that's it. The decide they are "in love" and kiss.

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Offline

Yesterday, about mid-day, the internet at our house died for no apparent reason. I was typing along on the internet, working away, when it started to run slower and then eventually disconnected altogether. We happen to be customers of a large, national company that provides phone, internet and cable TV services--on the occasion that company does a tweek here or a service thing there, and the internet has a little hiccup, so at first we just waited for service to come back. As a few minutes stretched into half an hour we knew it was more than a "blip" so we tried resetting the router in the house. That didn't work so we tried resetting the modem from the company...and that's when we saw it. The modem was getting a signal but it was not sending one out. Furthermore, when we turned it off to reset it, there had been three lights and now there were only two. Something was definitely wrong! Once we realized something was actually wrong, we decided to call the company for service. After all they can often do a few things over the phone and presto! Well...the phones could dial and we could hear them but they couldn't hear us. What in the world was going on?

Just so you know, we did finally figure out what happened--we had a huge power surge at the house. We called the company using a cell phone and managed to get through to have them do several diagnostics and walk us through a few things. Apparently the power surge took out a power supply, the company modem and affected our phones. We had to struggle through the night with no internet whatsoever, but in the morning the repairman came to the house to replace the company modem, we installed a new power supply and everything seems just fine. I was tickled to be able to be online today!

Being without the internet, we had to resort to connecting the old-school way: talking. We spent the night talking about ideas, writing articles, discussing concepts, reading the Bible and contemplating what it meant, reading a story that we're reading together, and even watching a movie with our son. But being without the internet taught me an important lesson. How often do we as lovers and parents sit at our computers at night and play a game or goof around on Facebook, and let hours pass by when we are not really connecting with our spouses or children? Last night we had ALL KINDS of time to be with each other, discuss ourselves and our feelings and our days, spend time with our children and read the Bible. Other nights it seems like we have so little time--yet it's the same 24 hours that we always have every day. What was the difference? No internet.

So I learned that like quicksand, the internet can suck a person in--even if they are sucked into working on a good cause! Slowly more and more time and attention is spent online: writing, talking, replying, even playing. Is the internet evil? No. But it's just another way that a couple can be distracted from their obligation to connect to their spouse, to be present for them, or to demonstrate loving actions. Yes the internet can be a tool to connect also but just a word for the wise--is the internet preventing you from spending time with your spouse? Could your marriage be weakened or vulnerable due to the internet? Build a strong, affair-free marriage by not allowing a communication tool to capture your time, energy and thoughts...and offer those instead to the one you love.

Decisions

Recently I've been a little stymied on the blog and I just could not get a grasp of a topic that was relevant to affairs but something personal that I also wanted to write about. Now I've been a writer my whole life and I know that these "dry patches" happen so I knew life would drop a topic into my lap eventually. My Dear Hubby's ex actually dropped the topic for us.

My Dear Hubby and I have unusual relationships with our exes, I believe. We are in touch with them both and neither one of us has animosity toward our ex or toward our spouse's ex. Would we have made the life choices that they made? HECK NO! But people have to learn the way they have to learn, right? Anyway, yesterday my Dear Hubby had to be in touch with his ex about another topic, and she said something to this effect, "Boy I was a hard person to live with! How could you stand being with me?" and his answer was "I just decided to love you." BAM! There's the topic I've been waiting for (and hopefully the end of my dry spell). In one sentence my Dear Hubby was able to sum up years of what I've learned by studying marriages and affairs. It is a decision.

Unfortunately here in the USA we are inundated every day with the message that sex is love and that infidelity is a love affair. People search earnestly for "happiness" and "true love" and for most of their lives they are fed the wrong message. Our TV programs show tawdry sex in the afternoon soaps, and the evening shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "The Bachelor" show that love is an emotion or something you win by being catty and conniving! Staying faithful is a marriage is something to be laughed at in most of the sitcoms, and people are routinely portrayed as finding their soul mate and then living forever in the state of wedded infatuation and steamy hot passion. But it's not only TV that shows us these values. Everywhere you look, it's in magazines, in the news, and on the internet--even one christian forum I post on had to ask GoogleAds to stop the sex ads showing "Girls from (your city) want to have sex with you right now!" Furthermore, our celebrities (being human just like us) over and over again fall into the trap of infidelity, and their affair is portrayed as a "love affair"...as if two people met and fell so desperately and deeply in love they could not resist each other. That is the way affairs are idealized!

But after studying, investigating, researching and working with couples in troubled marriages for more than a decade, I have come to the conclusion that the messages that we are getting on TV, magazines, news and internet are just not true. Love is not sexual passion, nor is it a feeling or emotion that floods over you that you can't resist. Love is a decision. And being faithful is a decision.

When we marry, we contract with another person to be faithful to them and live with them through all that life offers for a lifetime--hopefully that's 50, 60 or even 70 years. I don't think there is any way to expect to be so passionately deeply in love for 70 years that you can't resist each other--and yet that's what people pursue! At some point over almost a century together, life is going to throw you some curves: health problems, lost jobs, moving across the country, death in the family, having a child. All these things are difficulties that can affect a marriage and make one or both of the partners "unhappy." So at some point love is a decision. You just DECIDE to love the person to whom you are married despite the fact you're not happy right this moment, or despite the fact they are not handling their family member's death so well. So love is not "chemistry" or that emotional feeling that overwhelms you when you feel intimately connected to someone. Love is a conscious, conscientious choice--a conclusion that you reach--a determination. True Love involves the mind.

In fact, just as my Dear Hubby did with his ex, you may even decide to love your spouse despite the fact that they aren't behaving in a particularly loving way! Just like True Love, being faithful is a conscientious choice. The difference between Love and being faithful is that when a person is faithful, they get to know them self and their personal weaknesses, and they put up hedges to protect their marriage and their spouse. Not only is there the decision to use will power and not stray, but also the decision to stop a temptation before it even hits you! And if a temptation does hit--there is the decision that it is more important to honor the commitment made to one person than it is to pursue "happiness" or that emotional feeling.

So we decide. And if we make a mistake and choose the wrong thing we decide again! We can decide to admit we were wrong and get back on the right track...and that's honorable and the way back to reconciling and recovering after an affair.

Lessons from history on how to get out of a recession of any kind--financial or marital

Yesterday I wrote on my Portland Infidelity Examiner page:"Save money by saving your marriage after infidelity" and it got me to thinking about this recession and our marriages. When the main breadwinner loses his/her job in a family, and prices go up, it's natural that there would be tensions in a marriage, and yet statistics indicate that whenever there is a recession, the divorce rate lowers. What can we learn from the generation that got out of The Great Depression about getting out of this recession and saving marriages? The Greatest Generation seemed to be willing to do something that most current citizens and politicians seem unwilling to do, and that's sacrifice.

Now this is not going to be a big "Rah! Rah! The military is great!" post, but rather a post about sacrifice: foregoing, abstaining, surrendering, releasing, letting go of, delaying gratification for the good of the future or the good of another. If that's not what love is all about, I don't know what is! Loving our spouse means that we forgo or surrender ourselves and our wants and our selfishness for the good of the one we love. To get out of the Great Depression, that generation willingly "did without," saved money, cut down on their expenses, put their noses to the grindstone and worked, kept within their budgets and rations, and any blood they could squeeze out of the turnip they didn't keep for themselves but used it for others--AND THE GOVERNMENT DID THE SAME! When the citizen was asked to tighten their belt, they didn't take the money and use it to expand spending and add programs. These qualities were exemplified over and over again in practical and personal ways. I know from personal experience that my Grandmother lived through the Depression, and she cooked in coffee pans, grew her own vegetables her whole life, and learned how to darn and repair her clothes. She recycled, reused and saved EVERYTHING decades before it was "cool" to do so. The Greatest Generation sacrificed for the good of the future and the nation.

This same principle that would pull our marriages out of a "marital recession" after an affair. If your marriage has been rocked by an affair, you can save it fro mthe brink of disaster by foregoing, abstaining, surrendering, releasing, letting go of, and delaying gratification for the good of the future or the good of spouse. Now I am not advocating becoming a doormat or sacrificing forever. Sacrificing for too long can lead to resentment and make your Taker stronger and stronger. No I mean foregoing what you need to offer to your spouse what they need. I mean abstaining from Love Extinguishers that are putting out the fire of love in your marriage. I mean surrendering "what you want" and thinking instead of the other person. I mean releasing your selfish desires and embracing selfless desires. I mean letting go of the bad spirits and pride in yourself, admitting the places where you were wrong, and working on yourself. I mean delaying the gratification of knowing "if there's hope" for the good of the future or the good of your spouse. You married your spouse until death parted you, and hopefully that 50 or 60 years or more! Even if you two do spend a few years wrestling with and growing from this affair--it's well worth a few years work for a 60 year investment!

Sacrifice. Tighten the belt and give for the good of the future. It will bring us out of the recession -and- it will save our marriages after an affair.

Can Infidelity Really Be "Cured?"

In a recent article on my Examiner.com page, New year--New infidelity "cure"?, I let my readers in on a shocking discovery. Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, compared the genetic makeup of the prairie vole--a monogamous rodent--to the genetic makeup of its cousin the meadow vole--a promiscuous rodent--and discovered that the more promiscuous animal had decreased amounts of a hormone called vasopressin. Just as seratonin is linked to pleasure, vasopressin appears to be linked to happy monogamy. Further, human researchers at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, asked twins to take a Partner Bonding Scale test which shows the strength of a person's attachment to his or her spouse. Those twins who lower score on this test had a variant of the "334" gene--those who did not have this variant had significantly higher scores and more satisfying marriages and spouses!

My article raises the question of whether or not infidelity is genetic. Previously, a person's faithfulness to their spouse was considered to be in the realm of social sciences or a person's religious views. Morally, in Judeo-Christian society such as we have here in the USA, it is considered "wrong" to be unfaithful, and the only grounds for divorce granted in many churches is "sexual impurity." Speaking very generally, it's considered a virtue to remain faithful to one spouse for your whole lifetime, and that's usually at least part of the vows in marriage ceremonies. But if being faithful or unfaithful is genetic--does that change things? Will people be able to go to their doctor, in the future, and say, "I'm about to be married and would like a prescription for fidelity pills please?" And what if your spouse then lets their fidelity pill prescription lapse or secretly decided to not take them? Do modern science wonders like this change the dynamics of marriage in the 21st century and possibly even change morality itself?

Honestly, I think not.

As much as we'd like to think that curing infidelity would be as easy as "taking a pill" there really is a lot more to the marital loyalty than genetics. These kinds of medical discoveries may help explain why a person might lean one way or another, or help us understand the physical reasons behind the choices. For example, after researching the biochemistry of affairs, we know that chemically an affair is very similar to being high on drugs, and that the addiction to the affair partner can be just as strong as any addiction to drugs. This is why disloyal spouses find it so hard to end all contact with their lover--they miss the high, and in order to actually end all contact they have to experience withdrawal symptoms.

Understanding "why" in no way changes the moral and societal implications though. Being unfaithful is still a choice that's made (or really several very little choices) by the disloyal spouse, and the disloyal spouse still is personally responsible for the choices they make. Things that are considered sin by G*d would still be considered sin--we would just have a medical reason to explain our propensity to sin. Now, we just medically know WHY some folks say "Once a cheater, always a cheater" or why disloyal spouses find it hard to end the affair: because they have to go through addiction withdrawal. Knowing "why" does not change the morality of faithfulness in marriage, or shift the responsibility for the actions to genetics. Can't you just hear promiscuous people everywhere saying, "I couldn't help it! It's in my genes!" Well maybe there is a genetic leaning one way or the other, but part of being a godly spouse is choosing to struggle with temptations, protect our marriages, and choose to love our spouses!

Tiger Woods, Brad & Angelina....Why do they do it?

Tiger Woods is all the gossip recently for admitting to "transgressions" while married, and he is hardly the first celebrity who seems to have it all and ends up having an affair. Before Tiger there was Charles and Camilla, Brad and Angelina...even the AMAZINGLY beautiful Halle Berry had infidelity in her marriage! To us it seems like these people had everything: Tiger is a world-class golfer and could marry anyone; Charles had Princess Diana for heaven's sake; Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were the golden couple; and if Halle Berry couldn't keep her husband it couldn't possibly be about looks or sex. So the nagging question has to be this: "Why do they do it?"

Affairs are very rarely about looks or sex. I mean, look at Camilla and Princess Di--Prince Charles SURELY is not "trading up" in the looks department there so it couldn't be about looks! Yet somehow Charles just could not give up Camilla. Why? In a nutshell, it's because the Other Person (I call them OP) does things that KINDLE love at the same time that the loyal spouse (LS) is doing things to EXTINGUISH love. And we're all human--we tend to all do that. We get used to each other, the kids come, then the bills... and pretty soon we forget to take the time to do the things we used to do when we were dating.

The first thing I would say about the whole Tiger Woods affair--John Q. Public should give Tiger a break. We are not there and we do not know the facts, so to keep it on the rumor mill like this shows our worst tendencies, not his. Second, it is between him and his wife and family and it's none of our business! Third, we aren't there and we don't know the facts, so let's not assume that Tiger's the bad guy and his wife is somehow the victim. In my years of experience in this field what I've discovered is that this can happen to anyone if they don't guard themselves and that usually there was some sort of major relationship breakdown before this that set things in motion to get to where they are today. I'd say we should look at it like Tiger's hurting, his spouse is hurting, probably the other involved party is hurting, and now they have to go through all that in public too. In order to save their marriage, both parties will need to look at themselves, admit what they did to contribute to this mess, and then do the work necessary to change than and become a better person. If they both stop the actions that extinguish love and start again to do the things that kindle love--well honestly they could have a whole new, more intimate, more wonderful marriage!!