Challenges Dealing With Infidelity

Challenges dealing with infidelity may be the most difficult relationship issue you will ever face.

Many people mistakenly believe that infidelity always includes sex. But infidelity can just as easily come in the form of an emotional affair. Although it can be challenging to distinguish between an emotional affair and intimate friendship, there are at least two important differences: an affair almost always involves deception and secrecy.

Men and women typically enter into affairs for different reasons. Although this doesn’t always hold true, generally speaking, women tend not to have affairs unless they are already feeling disconnected from their spouse. On the other hand, a man might enter into an affair regardless of how close he feels to his wife; that is, men can tend to be more sexually opportunistic when compared to women.

This might help explain why women often experience more anguish dealing with infidelity from an emotional as opposed to a purely sexual affair, while a man is often more threatened by the fact that his wife is involved sexual as opposed to emotionally.

From a purely resources perspective these differences makes sense. A man never truly knows that his pregnant wife is carrying his, as opposed to another man’s, baby. Therefore, a man has in interest in knowing that his wife is only having sex with him. It would be a waste of his resources to raise another man’s baby. For a woman, her husband having sex with another women (although painful) is less consequential from a resources position. After all, it’s the other woman and a different man who will use their resources to raise the baby. But, if a woman’s husband is emotionally attached to another woman, the wife risks losing the resources that her husband is providing to her and the family; that is, her very security is threatened.

Once an affair is exposed, a couple has an elemental decision to make regarding dealing with infidelity. They must decide whether to try to work on the marriage or file for divorce. Sometimes couples are clear that they want to stay together and work through the pain of the infidelity. More often though one or both members of the couple is ambivalent about the relationship. In either case, it is almost always beneficial to seek out the services of a reasoned Relationship Specialist. Working through an affair is no easy task and genuine healing usually takes many months.

Given the length of time required to heal from an affair, the process is often quite costly in terms of both time and money. And, if the affair results in causing a divorce, the emotional and monetary costs can skyrocket.

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