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Last edit 17/06/09

SUMMARY

• In effect, an extramarital affair or infidelity outsources intellectual, emotional and/or physical intimacy to an external contractor by sleight of hand.
• It may transfer a relationship problem to a secret location where it appears to be cured. If discovered this adds layers to the problem back home, where the excluded partner's choice of cure had been stolen in secret.

• It is not normal to think our partner intends to harm us. A clandestine affair, with or without sex is intentional, harmful, traumatic and humiliating. You can expect humiliated rage to follow discovery. More on trauma in Fidelity 108.
• Extra-marital intercourse occurs in both happy and miserable marriages. The statistics are wobbly, but at least 30% of marriages will NOT ever go down this road. If you add emotional affairs, that prediction is significantly less. More on Fidelity 1
• The sexual or emotional high can be intoxicating. Ordinary people can do almost anything to maintain the rhythm of infidelity. Like drunken sailors crashing a life on the rocks and telling themselves everything's fine.

• The situation is powerful. The place has a power and mystery of its own. How, where and when the actions are situated affects the outcome. In real estate its called location.
• Our capacity for self-deception is almost limitless. The unfaithful lie to both lover, partner and self in equal measure. Our brain camouflages its inner process - we regularly say one thing and do another, believing we actually did what we said we did. Thinking makes it so.
• The idea that you can 'affair proof' a committed monogamous relationship flies in the face of reality. Proponents of this view also proffer inflated divorce statistics (30% instead of the actual 4 adults per thousand per year i.e. 0.4%). More on Fidelity 2 and in 13 observations of intimate relationships.

• No secret is safe absolutely. However, the majority of illicit one-night stands, flings and clandestine affairs go undetected by the partner or spouse. It is gambling with the heart and happiness of loved ones. Deceit robs the other of choice about a situation that directly affects them. More on secrets in Fidelity 3
• Some affairs continue even after the betrayed has used web cams, phone taps, hacked email accounts, employed a PI and then confronted the cheater, who initially denies and later repents but continues in secret to be re-discovered months or years later. The marriage repeats its cycle again.
• Both partners can deny blatant proof of infidelity - the betrayed unwilling or afraid to end the marriage and the cheater wanting everything to continue unchanged (or else!). "It will never happen again, I promise." More on Fidelity 1.3.4

• Some people in long term relationships expect to negotiate sex with few or no words. Direct references to sexual behaviours can be considered crude or improper. This is a problem.
• Infidelity may not be a result of sex addiction but a lack of frank negotiation for sex inside the marriage together with erroneous views about love. See Levine 'Demystifying Love' (2007).
• Infidelity raises the bar on the qualities of the relationship that was betrayed. If the betrayer does not lift his/her game as a result, it leaves the betrayed wondering if she/he was ever that into them. Now both know what he/she expects from a relationship and is capable of delivering in an affair, why is it not happening at home? Do I matter in those ways?

• Financial costs: an extramarital affair of two or more years duration can be deemed a de-facto relationship, exposing the married cheater to financial claims in the Family Court of Australia, on their superannuation savings, income and property. A de-facto relationship may exist even when the partners do not think so. It is the Court that defines when it began and ended, based on the law and the evidence.
• The emotional costs are very high. Infidelity and recovery confirm the necessity of a self-differentiated, meaningful life; of valuing oneself and of intimate self-knowledge; of trusting that knowledge to one's partner - building mental maps of each other's inner world. More on Fidelity 2 and on mental maps.
• An exposed, clandestine affair may exhibit how out of touch with themselves and each other the partners have become.
• Depression is often an unrecognised factor in the drive toward infidelity and in its aftermath. Attachment issues and trauma are sometimes an unrecognised factor in the capacity for serial re-offending. The two can coincide in the one person to whom their behaviour is inexplicable. Particularly when they dissociate.

• Voluntarily disclosing the 'unsettling, guilt-producing and controversial' facts of the discovered infidelities returns hope and promotes healing but initially causes enormous distress. This may require professional help. More on Fidelity 2 and how to choose a therapist.
• An illicit affair may kill the assumption of goodwill that normally lubricates trust despite the rusted on mistakes and inevitable misunderstandings of everyday life. More on how to build a healthy family.
• Safety, peace, security and fidelity are the first concern. End the affair, voluntarily disclose accidental meetings. If it is a work mate, customer or client, then define the limits, redefine or change jobs. Open a window into the affair to re-build trust. Exhibit genuine empathy and contrition for the harm done. Make amends. More on Fidelity 108
• Together with the above is the willingness of both to be soft and vulnerable with each other; to be humble and contrite with the wounded, the wounder and the righteous - three roles that are within each of us. More on how to build a healthy family.

• However, being vulnerable is not safe when either partner continues to wound the other. That's the Gordian knot that may be cut by a counter intuitive response - reversing the fuser isolator routine described here on site is an example.
• It takes at least three to tango - an affair is a triangle. It is a family system best understood systemically. The betrayed person is a part of that system. More on family systems.

• Children are conceived in affairs occurring often at times of high fertility. It raises issues of paternity fraud and complex ethics about family blood lines when a child develops a life threatening, inheritable disease or requires compatible donor transplant. More on Fidelity 4
• Children accidentally or planfully involved in their parent's affairs are betrayed and wounded; are taught to lie; to deny emotional pain and some are publicly humiliated in both school and home communities. More on Fidelity 4

• Betrayal blindness and trauma are observable facts and co-create painful legacies. More on Fidelity 108
• Betrayal bonding is powerful and keeps hurting people 'attached' to each other. More on dysfunctional families. Some sex and romance behaviour is compulsive and has escalating negative consequences driven by denial and/or a history of childhood sexual assault. Denial requires a mental map that delimits vulnerability - more on site. External link to effect of sexual assault on young men.

• A planful and playful relationship is both conscious and intentional - it doesn't just happen by accident. That is true of a vibrant, exclusive relationship, a sanctioned affair and a meaningful life. More on site about meaning at intro 1 and intro 2.
• The majority of marriages survive an affair if the affair is ended. Some never recover. For many it is a turning point for the better. A few are utterly transformed by their experience and bring the wealth of its opening back into their primary relationship. That requires generosity and forgiveness on both sides. How to mend a broken relationship on site. Turning points on site.

• Betrayal is betrayal is betrayal. For example, swingers, those in 'open marriages' and sex workers in committed relationships are devastated by infidelity as well.
• Infidelity opens a door into the intergenerational grief of betrayals inflicted by and upon our parents and grandparents. This grief could stop here, but marrying intimacy with duplicity ensures that it will go on. More on transgenerational effects on site.

• Coming to terms with all of the above is the end of role-playing, false-self dilemmas and a beginning of the maturity that welcomes the sacred - not a religiosity but a broad spirituality that includes self, family and bio-community.If nothing sacred grows then anything remains possible until the next crisis raises the same issues again.

• Ultimately, it's about values, personal responsibility or simply, character.

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Some topic headings on the following pages: Fidelity 101

• Definition
• Prevalence
• Timing & Duration
• Related to divorce
• Size and shape of the problem
• A story of infidelity and healing
• Why and how did this happen

Fidelity 108

• Trauma, safety and fidelity after disclosure
• Making amends and authentic help-seeking
• Collateral damage to self-control and self-image
• Crisis and change
• Early Disclosure, Extracting clues in the dark and Catastrophic extraction
• Personality Disordered
• Pay Back Time?
• Toxic Shame

Fidelity 2

• First steps in recovery
• Prediction and 'Prevention'
• Professional help for intimate betrayal
• Comprehensive external sites and articles
• Recommended Books

Fidelity 3

• Hiding behind secrets, privacy, ambiguity and vagueness
• 3.2 The other woman and long duration affairs
• 3.3 The 'other friends' and should I tell
• 3.7 A policy on secrets
• 3.12 Ultimatums
• 3.13 Reader's questions answered

Fidelity 4

• The children involvedthose conceived in an affair and
• how to help them cope if witnesses.