Also, keep in mind that your partner probably isn’t in love with this woman. She probably isn’t prettier than you, either, and sleeping with her doesn’t mean that he loves you any less, only that he made a grave (and selfish) error in judgment. In her book, After the Affair, Janis Abrahms Spring, PhD reports that 10 percent of affairs last only one day; another 10 percent last more than a day but less than one month; 50 percent last more than a month but less than a year; 40 percent last more than two years; and very few last more than four years. Frank Pittman, MD, a psychotherapist, author, and former columnist of “Ask Dr. Frank” in Psychology Today, found that only 3 percent of married men who had affairs actually married their lovers, and among those who did get married, the divorce rate was 75 percent.
This may come as a surprise to most women, who have different ideas of what constitutes infidelity than men do. Women tend to find emotional affairs more of a betrayal than physical affairs, whereas men don’t consider it cheating until it gets physical. Women tend to think of affairs as passionate, whirlwind, fly-to-Paris-on-the-weekends romances, but most men don’t. They’re just scratching an itch and are ready to return to their marriages when they’re done.
Healing the Wound
If you break your arm, you put a cast on the fracture to let it heal. But if you have a calcium deficiency, or some other weakness in your bones, you’ll keep breaking them until you fix the underlying problem. Relationships are the same way. You can forgive an incident of infidelity, but if there’s something that is making your relationship ill, that’s causing your partner to feel inadequate or unsatisfied, the chances that he (or she) will cheat again are high.
This is not to say that it’s all your fault, either. Just like any other disease, this one has to be diagnosed professionally. Your first step after discovering infidelity should be to call a therapist and start going regularly, both individually and as a couple. Then, only after all three of you have really gotten to the root of the problem, and you’ve decided whether or not your partner is truly remorseful and willing to change, can you decide whether to save or scrap your relationship. There’s no guarantee he won’t cheat again, but there’s not guarantee he will, either.
