Shattered Vows
(continued)
PT: And so they repeat the story until it no longer creates
unmanageable arousal?
HEM: Yes. In fact, sometimes people are more devastated if
everything was wonderful before they found out. When a
betrayed spouse who suspected something says, "I don't know
if I can ever trust my partner again," it is reassuring to
tell them that they can trust their own instincts the next
time they have those storm warnings. But if somebody
thought everything was wonderful, how would they ever know
if it happened again? Its frightening.
PT: One question people these days are asking you is, Is
oral sex really infidelity?
HEM: The question they ask is, Is oral sex really adultery?
And that's a different question, because adultery is a legal
term. It is also a biblical term. The real issue is, Is
oral sex infidelity? You don't need to ask a psychologist
that -- just ask any spouse: "Would you feel that it was an
infidelity for your partner to engage in that type of
behavior?"
PT: Would women answer that differently from men?
HEM: It is not necessarily a function of gender. People
might answer it differently for themselves than for their
partners. Some people maintain a kind of technical
virginity by not having intercourse. However, even kissing
in a romantic, passionate way is an infidelity. People know
when they cross that line from friendship to affair.
PT: So you don't have to have intercourse to have an
affair?
HEM: Absolutely. There can be an affair without any kind
of touching at all. People have affairs on the Internet.
PT: What is the sine qua non of an affair?
HEM: Three elements determine whether a relationship is an
affair.
One is secrecy. Suppose two people meet every morning at
seven o'clock for coffee before work, and they never tell
their partners. Even though it might be in a public place,
their partner is not going to be happy about it. It is
going to feel like a betrayal, a terrible deception.
Emotional intimacy is the second element. When someone
starts confiding things to another person that they are
reluctant to confide to their partner, and the emotional
intimacy is greater in the friendship than in the marriage,
that's very threatening. One common pathway to affairs
occurs when somebody starts confiding negative things about
their marriage. What they're doing is signaling: "I'm
vulnerable; I may even be available."
The third element is sexual chemistry. That can occur even
if two people don't touch. If one says, "I'm really
attracted to you," or "I had a dream about you last night,
but, of course, I'm married, so we won't do anything about
that," that tremendously increases the sexual tension by
creating forbidden fruit in the relationship.
PT: Another question you told me people now ask is, "Are
you a liar if you lie about an affair?" How do you answer?
HEM: Lying goes with the territory. If you're not lying,
you have an open marriage. There may be lies of omission or
lies of commission. The lie of omission is, "I had to stop
at the gym on my way home." There is the element of truth,
but the omission of what was really happening: "I left after
15 minutes and spent the next 45 minutes at someone's
apartment."
The lies of commission are the elaborate deceptions people
create. The more deception and the longer it goes on, the
more difficult it is to rebuild trust in the wake of an
affair.
PT: The deception makes a tremendous psychological
difference to the betrayed spouse. What about to the person
who constructed the deception?
HEM: Once the affair's been discovered, the involved
partner could have a sense of relief, if they hate lying and
don't see themselves as having that kind of moral character.
They'll say, "I can't understand how I could have done a
thing like this, this is not the kind of person I am."
Some people thrive on the game. For them, part of the
passion and excitement of an affair is the lying and getting
away with something forbidden.
There are some people who have characterological problems,
and the affair may be a symptom of that. Such people lie
about their accomplishments; they are fraudulent in
business. When it's characterological, I don't know any way
to rebuild trust; no one can ever be on sure footing with
that person.
PT: So there is always moral compromise just by being in an
affair?
HEM: Which is why some people, no matter how unhappy they
are in their marriage, don't have affairs. They can't make
the compromise. Or they feel they have such an open
relationship with the spouse that they just could not do
something like that without telling their partner about it.
Back to Alpha Aerie's "Differences" Newsletter
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HEM: ...any time somebody suffers from a trauma, part of
the recovery is telling the story. The tornado victim will
go over and over the story -- "when the storm came I was in
my room..." -- trying to understand what happened, and how
it happened. "Didn't we see the black clouds? How come we
didn't know?"