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Q: Another interesting question you told me people now ask is, “Are you a liar if you lie about an affair?” How do you answer that?

Dr. G. Lying goes with the territory. If you’re not lying, you have an open marriage.

There may be lies of omission or lies of commission. The lie of omission is, “I had to stop at the gym on my way home.” Or, “I had to go to the library.” There is the element of truth, but the omission of what was really happening: “I left there after 15 minutes and spent the next 45 minutes at someone’s apartment.”

The lies of commission are the elaborate deceptions people create. The more deception and the longer it goes on, the more difficult it is to rebuild trust and honesty in the wake of an affair.

Q: The deception makes a tremendous psychological difference to the betrayed spouse. What about to the person who constructed the deception?

Dr. G. Once the affair’s been discovered, the involved partner could have a sense of relief, if they hate lying and don’t see themself as having that kind of moral character. They’ll say, “I can’t understand how I could have done a thing like this, this is not the kind of person I am.”

Some people thrive on the game. For them, part of the passion and excitement of an affair is the lying and getting away with something forbidden. Often, since childhood, they’ve had a whole history of sneaking around. In the marriage, one partner may be fairly parental and judgmental while the other avoids conflict by not being open about things. The affair is an extension of a preexisting pattern.

There are some people who have characterological problems, and the affair may be a symptom of that. Such people lie on their taxes and about their accomplishments; they are fraudulent in business. When it’s characterological, I don’t know any way to rebuild trust; no one can ever be on sure footing with that person.

Q: So there is always moral compromise just by being in an affair.

Dr. G. Which is why some people, no matter how unhappy they are in their marriage, don’t have affairs. They can’t make the compromise. Or they feel they have such an open relationship with the spouse that they just could not do something like that without telling their partner about it.

Q: Do affairs ever serve a positive function--not to excuse any of the damage they do?

Dr. G. Affairs are often a chance for people to try out new behaviors, to dress in a different costume, to stretch and grow and assume a different role. In a long-term relationship, we often get frozen in our roles. When young couples begin at a certain level of success and go on to achieve all kinds of things, the new person sees them as they’ve become, while the old person sees them as they were.

The unfortunate thing is that the way a person is different in the affair would, if incorporated into the marriage, probably make their spouse ecstatic. But they believe they’re stuck; they don’t know how to create that opportunity for change within the marriage. A woman who was sexually inhibited in marriage--perhaps she married young and had no prior partners--may find her sexuality in an affair, but her husband would probably be delighted to encounter that new self.

Q: How do you handle this?

Dr. G. After an affair, I do not ask the question you would expect. The spouse always wants to know about “him or her”. “What did you see in her that you didn’t see in me?” Or, “what did you like about him better?” One man asked, “was it that he had a bigger penis?”

I always ask about “you”: “What did you like about yourself in that other relationship?"

How were you different? And, of the way that you were in that other relationship, what would you like to bring back so that you can be the person you want to be in your primary relationship? How can we foster that part of you in this relationship?

Q: That’s a surprising question. How did you come to know that’s the question to ask?

Dr. G. There is an attraction in the affair, and I try to understand what it is. Part of it is the romantic projection: I like the way I look when I see myself in the other person’s eyes. There is positive mirroring. An affair holds up a vanity mirror, the kind with all the little bulbs around it; it gives a nice rosy glow to the way you see yourself. By contrast, the marriage offers a make-up mirror; it magnifies all your wrinkles and pores, every little flaw. When someone loves you despite the fact that they can see all your flaws, that is a reality-based love.

In the stories of what happened during the affair, people seem to take on a different persona, and one of the things they liked best about being in that relationship was the person they had become. The man who wasn’t sensitive or expressive is now in a relationship where he is expressing his feelings and is supportive.

Q: Can those things be duplicated in the marriage?

Dr. G. That’s one of the goals, not to turn the betrayed spouse into the affair partner, but to free the unfaithful spouse to express all the parts of himself he was able to experience in the affair.

I see a lot of men who are married to very competent women and having affairs with very weak women. They feel: “this person needs me.” They put on their red cape and do a lot of rescuing. They feel very good about themselves. That makes me sad, because I know that even though their partner may be extremely competent, she wants to be stroked too. She wants a knight in shining armor. Perhaps she hasn’t known how to ask for it, or the ways she’s asked have pushed him away.

Q: Do people push their partners into affairs?

Dr. G. No. People can create a pattern in the marriage that is not enhancing, and the partner, instead of dealing with the dissatisfaction and trying to work on the relationship, escapes it and goes someplace else.

Q: That is the wrong way to solve the problem?

Dr. G. Yes. There are some gender differences in the ways partners handle problems, although everything we say about men can be true for some women, and everything we say about women can be true for some men. Generally when a woman is unhappy, she lets her partner know. She feels better afterwards because she’s gotten it off her chest. It doesn’t interfere with her love. She’s trying to improve the relationship: “If I tell him what makes me unhappy, then he will know how to please me; I am giving him a gift by telling him.”

Unfortunately, many men don’t see it as a gift. They feel criticized and put down. Instead of thinking, “she feels lonely; I will move toward her and make her feel secure,” they think, “What is wrong with her? Didn’t I just do that?” They pull away. If they come in contact with somebody else who says to them, “oh, you’re wonderful,” then they move toward that person. They aren’t engaged enough in the marriage to work things out. The partner keeps trying, and becomes more unpleasant because he’s not responding.

Continued >

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