Anytime there is a transition in your marriage, or a major crisis, there is the risk of an affair. When people are hurting, they often want quick fixes. They want a fast way out of their pain. Affairs often promise a fast way out of pain. Since they offer fast pain relief to a challenging situation, they are tempting.
The risk for an affair is even higher if that spouse has used sex previously as a way to self-medicate, or deal with a crisis they were in. As humans, we often return to what we have done before. The assumption is that if it worked before, it will work again, even if it did not work out well the first time. This is often called ‘repetitive compulsion‘.
When it comes to transitions in your marriage, that adage does not work so well. Although going through the stages of marriages may look like you have gone through this before, when it comes to marriage each stage is different and calls for a different solution. Treating them all the same will give you more of the same old problems.
So what are these stages? I’ll give you a brief overview. (Note: Some therapists claim there up to nine stages of marriage).
First, there is the stage of getting married. This is when the two of you join together and sort through friends and associations. Some you will keep and some have to be ended. This stage calls for a sorting in terms of deciding which relationships to keep and which to loose. Keeping the wrong friends creates problems. With social media, there is a higher risk of this than seen in previous generations. The risk for affairs here are wrong friends (such as in old flames) that you keep around longer than you should.
Second, there is the birth of your first child. This stage often requires the family to develop its identity separate and distinctive from the family of origin. This often means you have to set boundaries. If you never successfully completed the sort from the previous stage, setting boundaries will be more difficult. The risk for affairs here is not connecting well enough with your spouse.
The third stage is when the youngest child leaves home. This stage forces you and your spouse to return to being a couple. Now there are fewer distractions. You are faced with the challenge of resuming the relationship the two of you started in the marriage. This stage can be scary if you have put children ahead of your spouse or when you are scared of your spouse. Getting back into relationship can be intimidating. It does not have to be, yet for some of you, it may seem like an insurmountable task. It may feel like “I have to live the rest of my life with him/her? I don’t even know them”.
The third stage puts the two of you in a position to where you are interacting and discovering what it is like to be ‘in relationship’. If you have not been nurturing your relationship along the way, this may be a challenge. The risk of an affair is high here, either in terms of using an affair to avoid intimacy or to avoid facing home without the children or to put off having to find new meaning and purpose in your life. If the two of you do not enjoy each other, this stage can seem threatening.
The fourth stage is when the two of you face the challenge of retirement. The challenge here is maintaining a marriage relationship without the distraction of jobs and with changes in your physical abilities and attractiveness. The muscular man or shapely woman you married has changed. Coming to grips with this is intimidating.
Some cheaters avoid this by having an affair with a younger version of who they married. This is a twisted situation in that the lover is a type of their spouse. As a couple you will also face the challenge of how to maintain your relationship with declining physical attributes, along with having your spouse around 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week. In some cases the declining health is a concern in others, the constant day in and day out contact is problematic.
There are unique risks of cheating at each stage. It would be nice if life had no risks, but that is not possible. Assuming that because you have been married for a long time that the risk of an affair is non-existent is a mistake. You still have to win over your spouse even years after being married to each other. How you express your love and how you deal with your spouse’s needs will change over time, yet the dynamic of loving them the way they need to be loved does not change.
Knowing what the risks are at each stage can better help you understand and deal with those risks.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
