How common are affairs? Survey findings range from a low of ap-proximately 25 percent of all married couples having affairs to a high of 50 percent and more. Affairs are probably more common now than they were in generations past. Certainly they are more public and have less disastrous consequences for the participants.
Infidelities, either in marriages or in committed relationships, range from the occasional one-night stand to the once-in-a-lifetime grand amour. Admittedly, there is great diversity between those two ex-tremes, but affairs can generally be divided into two broad categories:
low emotional-involvement affairs and those of higher emotional involvement. The types of affairs men and women choose vary in their implications and consequences both for the person and the marriage or the relationship.
Low-involvement affairs
Occasional low-involvement affairs are the most common form of infidelity. Meetings are probably sporadic, though the partners may see each other frequently, even on a regular basis. More regular meetings may take the form the French label la matinee, a light-hearted affair between working men and women who use the lunch hour for their rendezvous. The relationship, however, does not deepen significantly no matter how often they meet. The feelings exchanged, not time spent together, determine the true nature of an affair.
The one-night stand is a particular form of low-involvement affair.
One or both of the participants treat sex as a form of energetic play.
He or she may have frequent one-night stands, utilizing the opportun-ities afforded by business travel, for example. Or he or she may indulge only rarely, regarding extramarital sex as a sometime thing, the moral equivalent of indulging in too much wine or food. One-night stands usually leave little emotional impact, except perhaps for guilt.
The basic rule for low-involvement affairs is: Never become “seri-ous.”
The risks include being caught by a spouse or employer, inadvert-ently getting involved with someone who is prone to obsessive love relationships, and contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD) which are also risks for the high-involvement affair. An additional risk is that one partner may fall in love with another and want to escalate the relationship to the “serious” level, a real danger when one or both is unhappily married and perhaps looking for a way out of the marriage.
EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIRS
EXAMPLE
“When I go out of town on business, I find a woman to share my bed, unless I’m just too busy,” says Roger. “It’s novel and exciting to be with a woman for an hour, a day, a week - and then to say good-bye.
Of course, I am careful to use condoms. I wouldn’t want to bring anything home to my wife. And I am also careful about the kind of women I choose, women who know the score and have no illusions about their place in my life. It’s better if a woman is married and has as much to lose as I do.
“Sometimes I think of a lover for a week or two after the encounter.
We may even work out our schedules so that we can meet again from time to time, but I never let myself fall in love with any of them. Nor do I think any of them have fallen in love with me. My primary com-mitment is to my wife. Besides, I am very busy. I couldn’t handle more than an occasional fling.
“There are even times when I’m away from home and too busy to devote the time to wining and dining a woman. Of course, if I could have a woman delivered to my room, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
High-involvement affairs
When the lovers describe themselves as sexually, emotionally, and intellectually attuned, they are partners in high emotional-involvement affairs. The conventional notion of highly emotional affairs is that such relationships follow a cycle: intense infatuation with a new person, a relatively quick decline in passion, disillusionment, dissolu-tion. Certainly some affairs fit this model, particularly since enormous emotional resources are required to lead two lives. Others may develop slowly over time. They may have begun as low-involvement affairs and escalated when the partners developed strong feelings for each other. Some parallel a good marriage in the way they have moved from a strong erotic attachment to a more comfortable and enduring closeness.
High-involvement affairs are less common than low involvement relationships for the obvious reason: It is simply too difficult for most married people to steal away for more than a few hours a week. Al-though many people may dream of a grand amour, they can’t find the time to have one.
SECRETS OF BETTER SEX
EXAMPLE
“Sex to me is more than just a roll in the hay,” says Monica. “It’s very important. When I first met Barry seven years ago and he came on to me, I quickly straightened him out. I told him I was married, and I didn’t believe in casual sex. He was insulted, but I thought he got what he deserved.
“Over the next year or so we continued to run into each other with our respective spouses at social gatherings. I was attracted to him and I knew he was attracted to me. But I had never had an affair and couldn’t imagine having one.
“Then my husband suggested we invite Barry and his wife over for dinner. I went along with this and soon we were seeing a lot more of each other as couples. I had this vague feeling of discomfort, but I enjoyed seeing him too much to put a stop to our couples’ friendship.
“I realized one night that I was falling in love with him, which spelled trouble for me. Once I knew I loved him, I was vulnerable to his advances. We began having an affair.
“We’ve been seeing each other five years now, three or four times a week. We still get together socially with our mates, but not often.
Neither Barry nor I encourage it. It’s not a comfortable situation for either of us. My hope is that one day we will be able to untie our present marital knots and live together openly as husband and wife.”