Infidelity…You Can Recover
Expert Advice from Peggy Vaughan from her keynote speech "The Monogamy Myth"at the 3rd annual Smart Marriages conference July, 1999 in Washington, DC.
http://www.smartmarriages.com/monogamy.myth.html

Why Affairs Happen: (The reasons for affairs are a combination of 3 different kinds of factors.)

• Factors that PUSH people into affairs (problems/faults/shortcomings of individuals or relationship).
• Factors that PULL people into affairs (excitement, curiosity, enhanced self-image, "falling in love").
• Societal factors that contribute to affairs (fascination with affairs, using sex to sell, deception learned as teens due to our inability to talk honestly about sexual issues, and the secrecy surrounding this issue that serves to protect those having affairs from dealing with the consequences of their actions).

How to Prevent Affairs:

• What will NOT work: Assuming it can’t happen to you, being "in love," promising to be faithful, threats or ultimatums, religious commandments, having more children, repeating the marriage vows, spicing up your sex life, trying to be "perfect," and trying to meet all your partner’s needs.
• What is more likely to work: Being aware that no one is immune from having an affair, making a commitment to honesty (rather than just a promise of monogamy), and engaging in ongoing, honest communication about everything that impacts your relationship, including attractions to others.

How to Recover if an Affair Occurs:
Rebuilding the Marriage:

• Answering all questions and hanging in through the inevitable emotional turmoil.
• Severing contact with the third party and building trust through actions, not promises.
• Making a commitment to Honesty and to ongoing honest communication.
• Accepting the fact that monogamy is an issue that’s never settled "once and for all."

Personally Recovering from the Emotional Impact (regardless of whether the marriage survives):

• Accepting the fact that it happened (no more "if only..." or "why me?")
• Deliberately focusing on dealing with it and talking openly about what happened.
• Allowing time to heal—and, most of all, believing it’s possible to recover.
• Understanding that this is not just personal failure...that societal factors play a part as well.

NOTE Seeing affairs ONLY as a personal failure of you or your spouse or your particular marriage inevitably leads to personal blame, personal shame, wounded pride, and almost universal feelings of devastation. Self-help strategies alone seldom bring full recovery from this experience, either as a couple or individually. Recovery depends on getting beyond our strictly personal view of affairs and gaining an under-standing of them within a broader frame-work.

Before you decide on Divorce - do you know?

• Marriages, like everything else, go through slumps - down times.  And things often get better on their own with time. "The Case for Marriage"  points out that many  spouses who reported their marriages to be at the bottom of the scale on marital satisfaction, when asked again  five years later, reported being at the top on marital happiness. When asked what changed, many had no idea. It seems that keeping your vows - hanging in through the "for worse" times - can get you to the promised land.  Get married, stay married - what a concept. Recent follow up research, Does Divorce Make People Happy? fleshes out this earlier research. People going through unhappy periods in their marriage fantasize about getting out of their marriage and falling in love with someone new.  It leads to so much more happiness - in the long run -  if you can fall back in love with the person with whom you have children, extended family and a history.
• You CAN get past affairs, betrayals, disappointment, boredom and burnout and come out better andstronger than before. 
• Remarrriages have a higher failure rate than first marriages.
  We think if we just change partners, our problems will be solved.  Not so!
• Men, women and children all do better on in intact, successful first marriages on all the measures: health, wealth, satisfaction and success.  Work things out and you'll all be better off in the long run.

Diane Sollee, www.smartmarriages.com

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