Shattered Vows (continued) PT: Are affairs about sex?
HEM: Sometimes infidelity is just about sex. That is often more true for men. In my research, 44% of men who said they had extramarital sex said they had slight or no emotional involvement; only 1.1% of women said that. Oral sex is certainly about sex. Some spouses are more upset if the partner had oral sex than if they had intercourse; it just seems so much more intimate.
PT: What is the infidelity in infidelity?
HEM: The infidelity is that you took something that was supposed to be mine, which is sexual or emotional intimacy, and you gave it to somebody else. I thought that we had a special relationship, and now you have contaminated it; it doesn't feel special any more, because you shared something very precious to us with someone else.
There are gender differences. Men feel more betrayed by their wives having sex with someone else; women feel more betrayed by their husbands being emotionally involved with someone else. What really tears men apart is to visualize their partner being sexual with somebody else.
Women certainly don't want their husbands having sex with somebody else, but they may be able to deal with an impersonal one-night fling better than a long-term relationship in which their husband was sharing all kinds of loving ways with somebody else.
PT: Why are affairs so deeply wounding?
HEM: Because you have certain assumptions about your marriage. That I chose someone, and the other person chose me; we have the same values; we have both decided to have an exclusive relationship, even though we may have some problems. We love each other and therefore I am safe.
When you find out your partner has been unfaithful, then everything you believe is totally shattered. And you have to rebuild the world. The fact that you weren't expecting it, that it wasn't part of your assumption about how a relationship operates, causes traumatic reactions.
PT: And it is deeply traumatic.
HEM: Its terrible. The wounding results because -- and I've heard this so many times -- I finally thought I met somebody I could trust.
PT: It violates that hope or expectation that you can be who you really are with another person?
HEM: Yes. Affairs really aren't about sex; they're about betrayal. Imagine you are married to somebody very patriotic and then find out your partner is a Russian spy. Someone having a long-term affair is leading a double life. Then you find out all that was going on in your partner's life that you knew nothing about: gifts that were exchanged, poems and letters that were written, trips that you thought were taken for a specific reason were actually taken to meet the affair partner.
To find out about all the intrigue and deception that occurred while you were operating under a different assumption is totally shattering and disorienting. That's why people then have to get out their calendars and go back over the dates to put all the missing pieces together: "When you went to the drugstore that night and said your car broke down and didn't come home for three hours, what was really happening?"
PT: This is necessary?
HEM: In order to heal. Because any time somebody suffers from a trauma, part of the recovery is telling the story.
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