Why does my wife have affairs

If Priya and her tattooed beau had their own bedroom, would they be as giddy as they are in the back of his truck? T he quest for the unexplored self is a powerful theme of the adulterous narrative, with many variations.

Others find themselves drawn by the memory of the person they once were. And then there are those whose reveries take them back to the missed opportunity, the one that got away, and the person they could have been. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote that in modern life,.

Bauman speaks to our nostalgia for unlived lives, unexplored identities, and roads not taken. When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: What other stories could we have been part of?

Affairs offer us a view of those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

Dwayne had always cherished memories of his college sweetheart, Keisha. Over the years, he had often asked himself what would have happened had their timing been different. Enter Facebook. The digital universe offers unprecedented opportunities to reconnect with people who exited our lives long ago.

Never before have we had so much access to our exes, and so much fodder for our curiosity. Lo and behold, they were both in the same city. She, still hot, was divorced. It seems to me that in the past decade, affairs with exes have proliferated, thanks to social media. These retrospective encounters occur somewhere between the known and the unknown—bringing together the familiarity of someone you once knew with the freshness created by the passage of time. The flicker with an old flame offers a unique combination of built-in trust, risk taking, and vulnerability.

In addition, it is a magnet for our lingering nostalgia. The person I once was, but lost, is the person you once knew. P riya is mystified and mortified by how she is putting her marriage on the line.

The constraints she is defying are also the commitments she cherishes. No conversation about relationships can avoid the thorny topic of rules and our all-too-human desire to break them. Our relationship to the forbidden sheds a light on the darker and less straightforward aspects of our humanity.

Bucking the rules is an assertion of freedom over convention, and of self over society. Acutely aware of the law of gravity, we dream of flying. Our conversations help Priya bring clarity to her confusing picture.

If he knew, he would be crushed. He would never believe it. She may be right. Or perhaps it would. Some relationships collapse upon the discovery of a fleeting hookup. Others exhibit a surprisingly robust capacity to bounce back even after extensive treachery. Priya has tried to end her affair several times.

But the self-imposed cutoffs become new and electrifying rules to break. Three days later, the fake name is back in her phone.

Yet her torment is mounting in proportion to the risks she is taking. Danger follows her to every movie theater and secluded parking lot. It is not my place to tell Priya what she should do. Besides, she has already made it clear that for her, the right thing is to end the affair. This distinction between the person and the experience is crucial. You reconnected with an energy, a youthfulness. I know that it feels as if, in leaving him, you are severing a lifeline to all of that, but I want you to know that over time you will find that the otherness you crave also lives inside you.

I often say to my patients that if they could bring into their marriage even one-tenth of the boldness, the playfulness, and the verve that they bring to their affair, their home life would feel quite different. Our creative imagination seems to be richer when it comes to our transgressions than to our commitments.

I f Priya succeeds in ending the affair, and doing so with finality, a new dilemma will arise: Should she tell her husband, or should she keep her secret to herself? Could her marriage survive the pain of revelation? Could it continue with a lie undisclosed? I have no tidy answer to offer. In many instances, however, I have helped couples work toward revelation, hopeful that it will open up new channels of communication for them.

Catastrophe has a way of propelling us into the essence of things. In the wake of devastating betrayals, so many couples tell me that they are having some of the deepest, most honest conversations of their entire relationship. Their history is laid bare—unfulfilled expectations, unspoken resentments, and unmet longings.

What has changed about monogamy or family life in the past 27 years to account for the closing gap? And why have so many women begun to feel entitled to the kind of behavior long accepted albeit disapprovingly as a male prerogative?

These questions first occurred to me a few years ago when I began to wonder how many of my friends were actually faithful to their husbands. From a distance, they seemed happy enough, or at least content. Like me, they were doing the family thing. They had cute kids, mortgages, busy social lives, matching sets of dishes. On the surface, their husbands were reasonable, the marriages modern and equitable. What surprised me most about these conversations was not that my friends were cheating, but that many of them were so nonchalant in the way they described their extramarital adventures.

There was deception but little secrecy or shame. Often, they loved their husbands, but felt in some fundamental way that their needs sexual, emotional, psychological were not being met inside the marriage. Some even wondered if their husbands knew about their infidelity, choosing to look away.

They were also unwilling to bear the stigma of a publicly open marriage or to go through the effort of negotiating such a complex arrangement. You are here Home Relationship help Help with relationships Affairs I've found out my partner is having an affair, what should I do?

I've found out my partner is having an affair, what should I do? Give yourself some time. Finding out such shocking news can leave you feeling angry and hurt. Seek support from trusted friends, family members or talk to trained relationship counsellor in a free Live Chat.

Talk to your partner. Although bringing the affair up with your partner may feel painful, it's important you can ask questions so you can assess exactly what has happened. Find somewhere private to talk where you won't be interrupted. Selterman, W. Motivations for Extradyadic Infidelity Revisited. The Journal of Sex Research. Weiser, A. Family Background and Propensity to Engage in Infidelity. Journal of Family Issues. Your Privacy Rights.

To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes.

Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Motivations Differ by Sex. Causes and Risks. Primary Reasons. Secondary Reasons. Coping With Cheating. Overcoming Infidelity. Verywell Mind's Online Therapy Awards, presenting the best providers across 20 important categories. Can Your Marriage Survive Infidelity? Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. Why Do Some Relationships Fail?

How to Have a Successful Open Marriage.