Making comparisons between couples when it comes to affairs poses some challenges. When an affair happens to you or someone you love, it is painful. It is hard to say one pain is worse than any other.
There are some unique challenges with ‘young’ marriages (less than 5 years) in comparison to older marriages(more than 5 years). The studies looking at this phenomena show that the risk for affairs is higher in younger marriages than older marriages. There is even a term for it, “Newlywed Cheating”. Even Ashley Madison reports that about 15% of its users are newlyweds (this amounts to about 500,000).
It is not clear if this is due to immaturity, fears of commitment, difficulty with love or some other issue. What this means is that today’s newlyweds have some challenges that previous generations did not openly deal with. It is possible that such problems always existed, but no one ever dealt with them.
With the newlywed marriage, the emotions run high. That means that you want to develop ways of using the emotions to attract each other rather than scare off or repel each other. Learning how to handle each others emotions is part of the task you have to master.
It is also during the newlywed period that couples form patterns that shape their marriage in terms of keeping secrets and how conflicts are dealt with. This means that you want to establish a precedent for honesty early in your marriage.
Hiding things or keeping things from your spouse is not a pattern you want to start. This is where you have to begin breaking bad habits. It is likely that you hid some things from your spouse when you were dating. When you are a newlywed, that needs to change. You’ll have to overcome your fears of rejection or how your spouse will react.
Although the risk of affairs is higher with newlywed marriages, you also have a higher tolerance for dealing with your spouse’s peccadilloes and willingness to forgive during this phase.
This is where the idea of forgiving your spouse, but not forgiving the cheating is important. Cheating is never acceptable (you may want to check out the blog post on not forgiving cheating). You do not want to establish a bad precedent here on forgiving the wrong thing.
If you are caught up with newlywed cheating, the video on forgiveness “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks” will help you stop bad habits from getting started.
The damage can be repaired. How the two of you deal with a newlywed affair sets patterns the two of you will follow afterwards for many years. Getting started on a solid foundation with good habits is critical.
Click the link and order your copy today to keep your marriage from the long term damage of bad habits and poor communication.
I will be addressing more of the issues related to newlywed affairs in later posts.
Best Regards,
Jeff
