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PRIVATE LIES A WEB OF SECRECY SURROUNDS MOST EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIRS. BUT HERE A PSYCHIARTRIST DISPELS A FEW OF THE MYTHS ABOUT THEM. READ ON -- AND EXPECT A FEW SURPRISES.
CATHY LAWHON, Orange County Register
SUN-SENTINEL
Privacy Policy
Have an affair, go to divorce court? Not necessarily.
The assumption that infidelity automatically severs the marital knot is one of seven myths about infidelity, says Dr. Frank Pittman, who spends most of his professional life examining people's extramarital affairs. The Atlanta psychiatrist and family therapist says the following myths are perpetuated by a society in which "affairs are the most common marital ailment the flesh is heir to."
Everybody does it: "That's not quite true," Pittman says. "The statistics and they're not trustworthy -- are that half of married men and one-third of married women have had affairs."
-- Affairs are good for you: Or so say self-appointed authorities, such as Playboy and Cosmopolitian magazines.
"The theory is that having an affair can revive a dull marriage," Pittman says. "But that's based on the assumption that life is a constant battle against marriage and that one attains victory over marriage with affairs."
-- If there is infidelity, it means the other partner is not loved: "The reality is that having an affair is not a reaction to not loving your mate. You have affairs because of things about you, not things about your partner. Sure, there are people out there who don't love anybody and they would be doing the same thing no matter who they were married to."
-- The affair partner must be sexier than the marriage partner: "This assumes that affairs are about sex," Pittman says. "But in truth, most affairs involve little sex. There is a lot of time spent on the telephone arranging quiet lunches to talk about getting together for sex. And when you finally do, it's not very good.
"Affairs are about adventure, mystery and seduction. Not sex."
-- If a man has an affair, it's his wife's fault: "I had a client who told me he had an affair and when I asked him why, all he could say was, 'I don't know. My wife must have failed me in some way."'
Women who have affairs buy into the myth, too. Once they stray, thus "letting their husbands down," many are determined that their husbands must also be unfaithful. One couple Pittman counseled faced just such a dilemma.
"She was so determined that he should have an affair that she tried to set him up with her friends," Pittman recalls. "He would wake up and find strange women in his bed. It didn't work."
-- It's best not to know: Wrong, says Pittman. Keeping secrets only leads to more lies and deception, even after the affair ends, which can ruin a marriage more quickly than learning the difficult truth.
-- If an affair is revealed, the marriage must end in divorce: In truth, Pittman says, affairs thrive on intrigue and are threatened by exposure. Honesty improves the ability to negotiate within the marriage.
"Most therapists believe in these myths," Pittman says. "And they are right sometimes, but mostly they are wrong."
Flawed as they are, these myths are often all that therapists have to call upon. The scarcity of professional study on affairs has left family therapists "at the mercy of their own individual experience," which is colored by society's Dear Abby approach to affairs, Pittman says.
"The psychological community is scared silly by the whole idea of infidelity. There are no guidelines on how to deal with it. The feeling is that it's too normal to bother with, too dangerous to explore, and that there are no 'expert opinions' on it."
Pittman plans to correct that professional inattention with a book due out this month called Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, to be published by W.W. Norton.
In the book, Pittman describes four categories of extramarital affairs:
--Accidental adultery: These occur outside the pattern of normal behavior.
"Somehow, you end up in a situation where the only polite thing to do is go ahead and have the affair; it would be rude to back out," Pittman says.
While these are often one-night stands that seem harmless and too inconsequential to mention, Pittman says they can destroy a healthy marriage.
"There is terrible anxiety until the secret is out. It becomes a breach of intimacy. The marriage ends five years later and the couple doesn't even know why."
--Philandering conquests: Philanderers are almost obsessed by the need for constant sexual conquests. These affairs are usually initiated by men, Pittman says, because women with this need don't get or stay married.
"These men must avoid the control of one woman. They have a fear of women, identify heavily with men and declare gender war."
The war is waged in the sexual arena, but women involved are not sex partners; they are objects.
"It's hard to like philanderers," Pittman says. "They're not terribly nice people and they're hard to treat since they develop a certain charm and social skills that get them by in most cases."
--Romantic rendezvous: Romantic affairs are characterized by feelings of intense love for a highly inappropriate partner, i.e. the daughter of a warring family, such as in Romeo and Juliet.
The ultimate expression of a romantic affair is to die together at the moment of consummation.
Romantic affairs begin during crises and serve to distract from the real issues, Pittman says.
--By marital arrangement: The attempt to supplement a bad marriage by having affairs is not new but neither is it effective. These are romances that become realistic. Although they are not explicitly acknowledged by marriage partners, they may be tacitly tolerated.
The result of all kinds of affairs, motivated and maintained by myths and misconceptions, is often the breakup of a marriage that could have been saved with a generous dose of honesty and openness, Pittman says.
"Infidelity is not about sex," he insists. "The primary infidelity is in the dishonesty, the lies and the web of secrecy. That dishonesty changes a marriage."
Secrecy, even motivated by the noble attempt to spare the spouse some hurt, means the unfaithful partner becomes trapped by lies.
"You begin to find that your only ally is that person who knows the secret (the affair partner)," Pittman says. "The enemy becomes the marriage partner. You end up living with your greatest enemy.
"Affairs are dangerous," he says. "They end marriages. They end good marriages. They are fueled by secrecy, threatened by exposure and treated by getting the secret out."