I don’t normally do this, but after reading this NY Times article, I deemed it worthy to link to on its own. It’s very well-written and offers insight from both perspectives – the one having an affair and the one betrayed by their spouse’s affair. In my experience as a therapist working with couples, everything the author writes is painfully true. So if you’re considering having an affair or are stepping into one, please read this article and reconsider. If you’re in the middle of an affair, take this as a sort of “wake-up call” and consider giving up the affair and admitting it to your spouse.
I believe that marriages can be salvaged from affairs, but it takes a lot of honesty and work to get there. If you’re going to work like that, you’re better off investing in the marriage without the affair; it will be easier and incomparably less painful. I can help with either situation, but typically find a much higher success rate when there is no extramarital affair present!
A Roomful of Yearning and Regret, 12/9/2010, by Wendy Plump
Excerpt:
“What you don’t know, or perhaps what you don’t allow yourself to think about, is that your life will become an unbearable mix of yearning and regret because of it. It will be difficult if not impossible to be in any one place with contentment.
This is no way for an adult to live. When you’re with your lover, you’ll be working on your alibi and feeling loathsome. When you’re with your spouse, you’ll be dying to return to your love nest. When you are at home, everything in your life will look just a little bit out of register — the furniture, the food in your refrigerator, your children, your dog — because you’ve detached yourself from your normal point of reference, and it now belongs to a reality you’ve abandoned.”