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Are you Suffering from an Affair?  Is your Partner having an Affair?

See Signs of Affairs and Recovering from Affairs

Infidelity is a dark shadow of partnership. Affairs can provide excitement for the bored, adventure for the restless and pride for the egotistic. Affairs also provide heartache, guilt, disappointment, shattered dreams and damaged lives - especially for the children of parents who have affairs.

Although this may be a difficult time for you, you can save your sanity.
Don't waste time - we help many people rebuild happy marriages.
Or do you want to end an unhappy partnership peacefully?
Or do you just want to make a decision and move on?

Who has Affairs? ... People like You!

• People in mid-life crisis
• People with opportunity and time
• People who want to fulfill a transference
• People who want to punish a partner or past partner
• People with unmet physical desires or emotional needs
• People who want to diminish the intensity or intimacy of a partnership

Are you trying to get over an affair? Coaching or counseling that does not resolve cross-generational entanglements is unlikely to provide lasting solutions. We can help you find lasting solutions for partnership and marriage problems.

Perhaps you feel hurt by a partner's romantic, intimate or sexual affair. Or perhaps you suffer guilt following your own acts of betrayal. But the real casualties of adultery include the children who will later be found in depressed corners of society.

What Price is a Free Lunch?

Some people flirt with everybody because they don't know how else to relate. Some people use internet chat to feel an emotional intimacy that they lack with their partners. Some people take training in  seduction, for more casual sex. But few lunches are really free, and the costs can be high.

There ain't no such things as family secrets! Your children will feel and respond to your or your partner's romantic or sexual affairs, usually in proportion to the length of time and emotional intimacy of your affairs, even if they are never told. Someone you love will pay for your free lunch.

Infidelity is a dark shadow of partnership. Affairs can provide excitement for the bored, adventure for the restless and pride for the egotistic. Affairs also provide heartache, guilt, disappointment, shattered dreams and damaged lives - especially for the children of parents who have affairs.

Mother-Son Bonds . Fathers & Daughters . Emotional Incest . Psychosomatic

Types of Affairs

Probably you or your partner could have affairs. Happy partnerships do not eliminate infidelity - and may even motivate you (if you are entangled with a parent or past-partner) to reduce the emotional intensity of your partnership. But affairs rarely mature into long-term committed relationships.

If you are having an affair, you are probably focused on your own needs. You may forget or ignore the needs of your life partner, affair partner and any children. You may avoid considering the consequences of your affair on your affair-partner. After all, no-one else will know ... right? See Signs of Affairs

• Business sex (trading sex for money, promotion or favors; including prostitution) may have the least emotional consequences and the highest risk of venereal disease
• Brief sexual affairs and one-night-stands rarely become love affairs or long-term friendships
• In-love affairs can be powerful and life-altering with overwhelming emotions - and they often end in severe suffering and stress for one or both affair partners
• Love affairs can become long friendships, although unpleasant feelings of guilt may cause you to eventually separate from or distance yourself from your partner or your affair partner

Men & Affairs

Men often tell us that they want affairs only for the pleasure of sex. Men may admit or boast that they pretend to be in love to have sex with women. (Many women have told us that men pretend to be in love as a preliminary for sex.)

Younger men usually seek sexual affairs rather than love affairs. Their primary motivations are physical pleasure, to succeed, to impress friends and to gain sexual experience. Older men are more likely to have affairs with women who understand, accept and appreciate them. They may also want to gratify sexual desires that they would not ask of a decent woman. (See Emotional Blackmail)

Men who are emotionally bonded to their mothers (see emotional incest) are likely to have affairs to avoid or to sabotage any committed partnership. They are also likely to boast to their male friends about the number and variety of their sexual adventures. (See Little Prince).

Women & Affairs

The longer a woman is married, the more likely she will have an affair. Women choose sexual affairs for pleasure and for experience. An affair may provide a woman with missing emotional intimacy. A woman may have affairs to create a reserve source of intimacy, especially if she feels bored, disappointed or uncertain about her partnership or marriage.

We find that women are more likely to satisfy missing emotional needs by mentally reliving past romantic affairs, or by preoccupation with the love lives of other people (gossip and soap operas etc).

We note that women who are emotionally bonded to their fathers (see emotional incest) seem more likely to have affairs and partnerships with immature older men (see Little Princess).

Reasons for Intimate or Sexual Affairs

Do you claim that an affair merely fulfills your needs, and helps you avoid feeling lonely or bored? Do you say, "I want to feel good regardless of the consequences of my choices on my partner or family - or on my affair-partner's partner or family".

You may justify affairs with: "I want ...

1. excitement and adventure
2. to rescue or help someone
3. to seduce or to be seduced
4. to avoid the reality of my aging
5. to fulfill an impulse or compulsion
6. to feel desirable or sexually potent
7. new or unusual sexual experiences
8. to distract myself from important problems
9. to enjoy love, intimacy, and companionship
10. to defy my social, religious or parental rules

Attacking, criticizing or defending these justifications will not improve relationships nor resolve needs. We help people restore peace, balance ... and rebuild love on a foundation of reality.

But we were so much in love...

The experience of romantic love may seem to replace a need to develop mature partnership skills. However, sooner or later, the problems of daily life together cause lovers to evaluate and confront their goals, responsibilities and transferences. Then they can create deeper bonds, or stagnate, or separate.

Predictable Partnership . Enjoying Partnership . Consequences of Abortion

Affairs, Separation & Divorce

1. People who have affairs are more likely to divorce.

2. People who divorce once are more likely to divorce again.

3. Some people say that affairs helped them survive marriage.

4. Women who have multiple affairs have the highest divorce rates.

5. If a male partner has a homosexual affair with a man - a woman usually wants separation.

6. If a female partner has a lesbian affair with a woman - a man may not perceive this as betrayal.

Couple Coaching & Testimonial . Recovering from an Affair

Stable, happy partnership results from partners who know and respect each other's values and needs; and cooperate to fulfill those values and needs. We help partners solve problems and develop skills.

Predictable Partnership . Enjoy Partnership . Evaluate Partnership . Partnership Breakdown

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Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2002-2010 All rights reserved

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2010 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers. We coach and train people to define and achieve goals, to resolve emotional blocks and to improve relationships. This information is for your general knowledge only. Please consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing any medical treatment. You must get Martyn's written permission to post or publish his work.