Affairs why

The state of your relationship, the stresses and pressures of your life finances, kids, job loss, depression, etc. First, a happy and fulfilling relationship does not protect you from infidelity—it certainly helps, but it is not an impenetrable shield. Second, you are only responsible for you and your own actions. There is nothing a person can do to prevent infidelity in their partner. With these ideas firmly in place, you can start to explore the why of the affair.

But there are a few central themes that we see pop up over and over as relationship counselors. It is surprisingly rare that someone is truly in love with the person they are having an affair with. They reveal our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment—attitudes that have changed dramatically over the past years.

A ffairs are not what they used to be because marriage is not what it used to be. For much of history, and in many parts of the world today, marriage was a pragmatic alliance that ensured economic stability and social cohesion.

A child of immigrants, Priya surely has relatives whose marital options were limited at best. For her and Colin, however, as for most modern Western couples, marriage is no longer an economic enterprise but rather a companionate one—a free-choice engagement between two individuals, based not on duty and obligation but on love and affection.

Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide—security, respectability, property, and children—but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends and trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot.

Contained within the small circle of the wedding band are vastly contradictory ideals. We want our chosen one to offer stability, safety, predictability, and dependability. And we want that very same person to supply awe, mystery, adventure, and risk. We expect comfort and edge, familiarity and novelty, continuity and surprise.

We have conjured up a new Olympus, where love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh so exciting, with one person, for the long haul.

And the long haul keeps getting longer. We also live in an age of entitlement; personal fulfillment, we believe, is our due. In the West, sex is a right linked to our individuality, our self-actualization, and our freedom. Thus, most of us now arrive at the altar after years of sexual nomadism. We used to get married and have sex for the first time. Now we get married and stop having sex with others.

The conscious choice we make to rein in our sexual freedom is a testament to the seriousness of our commitment. I can stop looking. At so many weddings, starry-eyed dreamers recite a list of vows, swearing to be everything to each other, from soul mate to lover to teacher to therapist. I will not only celebrate your triumphs, I will love you all the more for your failures.

In such a blissful partnership, why would we ever stray? And yet, it does. Infidelity happens in bad marriages and in good marriages. It happens even in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. The freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete. So why do people cheat? And why do happy people cheat? She vaunts the merits of her conjugal life, and assures me that Colin is everything she always dreamed of in a husband.

Clearly she subscribes to the conventional wisdom when it comes to affairs—that diversions happen only when something is missing in the marriage. If you have everything you need at home—as modern marriage promises—you should have no reason to go elsewhere. Hence, infidelity must be a symptom of a relationship gone awry. The symptom theory has several problems. First, it reinforces the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage that will inoculate us against wanderlust.

But our new marital ideal has not curbed the number of men and women who wander. In fact, in a cruel twist of fate, it is precisely the expectation of domestic bliss that may set us up for infidelity.

Once, we strayed because marriage was not supposed to deliver love and passion. Today, we stray because marriage fails to deliver the love and passion it promised. Second, infidelity does not always correlate neatly with marital dysfunction.

Yes, in plenty of cases an affair compensates for a lack or sets 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. However, therapists are confronted on a daily basis with situations that defy these well-documented reasons. Many of these individuals were faithful for years, sometimes decades.

They seem to be well balanced, mature, caring, and deeply invested in their relationship. Yet one day, they crossed a line they never imagined they would cross. For a glimmer of what? I want to understand what the affair means for them. Why did you do it? Why him? Why her? Why now? Was this the first time? We will take a look at a number of risk factors and causes for cheating, but it's important to point out upfront that a partner doesn't cause their spouse to cheat.

Whether it was a cry for help, an exit strategy, or a means to get revenge after being cheated on themselves, the cheater alone is responsible for cheating. Men are more likely to have affairs than women and are often seeking more sex or attention. So sex becomes an important path to connection and intimacy. If men aren't sexually satisfied for instance, if their spouse declines sex often , they take that rejection to heart, and it can easily translate to feeling "unloved.

When women cheat, they're often trying to fill an emotional void. Women are more likely to feel unappreciated or ignored, and seek the emotional intimacy of an extramarital relationship. An affair is more often a "transitional" partner for the woman as a way to end the relationship. She is seriously looking to leave her marriage and this other person helps her do just that. That's not to say that sexual satisfaction isn't a primary driver of affairs for wives as well as husbands.

Similarly, boredom with the marital relationship may lead both men and women to cheat. In one study of men and women who were actively pursuing or involved in extramarital affairs, both genders said they were hoping to improve their sex lives—because they felt their primary relationship was lacking between the sheets.

There's a myriad of reasons or causes why men or women may engage in an extramarital liaison, but certain risk factors—either with one of the individuals or the marriage as a whole—increase the odds it will happen. The general rule is that it takes two to tango, or in this case, to mess up their marriage with an affair, but there are certainly exceptions. Individual factors that may increase the chance of infidelity include:.

In a study looking at personality traits, women who ranked high in "neuroticism" and men who ranked higher in " narcissism " were more likely to cheat.

Problems in the marital relationship can also be a risk factor for cheating. Some of these include:. With or without individual or marital risk factors there are a number of possible reasons for marital infidelity. Underlying many of the reasons, however, lie a few threads. One is the role of unmet needs. One partner may be incapable of fulfilling their partner's needs, but far too often, those needs have not been expressed.

Marital partners are not mind-readers. Another is the lack of addressing problems directly. Running away from problems conflict avoidance rather than staying and addressing them is another crucial element in communication and commitment in marriage. Some of the reasons cited as the cause for cheating may include:. In addition to the primary reasons for cheating noted above, there are secondary reasons that may lead to an affair.

Sometimes people have a suspicion that their spouse is cheating but don't have any solid evidence. While often the best approach in marriage is to be direct, you may wonder if it will cause more damage to ask directly. And, of course, the answer your spouse gives could either be the truth or a lie. The best approach will vary for different couples, but if you're concerned, it may be a good idea to look for some of the signs.

Overall, therapy seems to work for about two-thirds of couples who have experienced infidelity. If a couple decides to stay together, they must identify areas of improvement and commit to working on them. The therapist can help the couple acknowledge the areas of the relationship in which trust has already been rebuilt. Then the betrayed partner can be progressively exposed to situations that provide further reassurance they can trust their partner without having to constantly check on them.

But if therapy works for two thirds of couples, it leaves another one third who experience no improvement. What then? If the relationship is characterised by many unresolved conflicts, hostility, and a lack of concern for one another, it may be best to end it.

Ultimately, relationships serve the function of meeting our attachment needs of love, comfort and security. But ending a relationship is never easy due to the attachment we develop with our romantic partner. Not only do we grieve the loss of the relationship no matter how good or bad , but we grieve over whether we will find another who will fulfil our needs.

The period of separation distress varies from person to person.