Have you ever wondered which came first, the marriage problems or the affair? I was stunned when one of my fellow marriage ‘experts’ claim that “Affairs aren’t symptoms of marital problems, they’re the cause of marital problems.”
I yelled out at my poor Toshiba computer”Then where do the affairs come from!” “Does she think that they just come ‘out of the blue?’
My Toshiba didn’t talk back to me, although my wife raised her eyebrows at my reaction. If I followed her line of thinking, then affairs happen to ‘happy’ problem-free marriages.
I haven’t found that to be the case. In my mind, affairs are a symptom of marital problems.
The cheater has either mentally or relationally checked out of the relationship for the affair to even happen. When a spouse checks out, there are marital problems.
To me, that’s as plain and simple as it gets.
Affairs are not the cause of marital problems. It’s true that they (affairs) make everything worse. At that point, the marriage is in CRISIS.
It’s not just a ‘problem’. For example, when your car starts making weird noises and not running right, you have problems. When the problems continue and the car stops running, you have a repair crisis.
At that moment you have gone from problem to crisis. Your marriage is in jeopardy when an affair happens. It’s not merely a ‘marriage problem’ at that point.
Your marriage is SCREAMING for help when an affair happens. This expert and her ilk can say that the affair brought the problem, but I know otherwise.
I’ve worked with enough relationships to know that the problem existed LONG before the affair happened. The mental or fantasy affair was one of the cheater’s solution to that problem. (See my e-book, Why He Cheats, for more information on this topic).
When the mental or fantasy affair doesn’t meet their needs or solve the problem, that’s when the affair happens as their solution to the problem. When you say that the “affair caused the problems” you do not understand what has been happening in your marriage.
At that point, you are as stuck in denial as the cheater is.
This is why it is important who you listen to when it comes to relationships and affairs. If you assume that the affair caused the problems in your marriage, you will make changes, yet fixing the wrong problem amounts to not fixing the initial problem.
When your basement is flooded, the situation is not fixed when you drain the basement. The problem is not fixed until you find the source of your leak.
You need solid answers when it is your marriage that is at risk.
So in terms of the question “Which came first, the marriage problems or the affair?” The answer is…the marriage problems. The affair is the cheaters way of dealing with the problems, NOT the cause of them.
What do you think?
Best Regards,
Jeff
