Love Affair: A Psychological Perspective on Extramarital Affairs

Chapter 25
Some of the statements collected in this book seem to support this view, especially in the case of low-involvement affairs (highly-involved affairs are another matter).In addition to resolving boredom, low-involvement affairs can be beneficial on two important levels: first, a person who lacks security or self-esteem can derive temporary satisfaction and confidence from each new affair; A person whose marriage is seriously flawed and cannot derive full satisfaction from it may find that extramarital relations are a complement and improvement to marriage.The following example shows both benefits:
An engineering researcher at a university in City Y, tall, shy, and soft-spoken.Early in his marriage to his second wife he discovered that she was an alcoholic and asexual.Unable to get her to stop drinking and too ashamed to divorce her again, he, after years of angst, met a hotel maid who he described as "very pretty, very kind, very warm, and very stupid."He overcomes his reserve, invites her to dinner, and they soon have the usual affair-style sex.

By the time of the sixth or seventh tryst, he found that the two of them could hardly have any more in-depth conversation.They were done talking about light topics, but his hobbies were incomprehensible to her, and her interests he found utterly dull.

"Having said that, we lasted a year and a half. We got together every Thursday night and Sunday afternoon because we were a perfect match sexually. Anyway, it was a great relationship. Sexually, My youth and two marriages were lackluster and I was able to maintain a sexually only affair. The fact that the affair not only satisfies me but also satisfies the woman is gratifying. We kept dating for a year and a half as long as she terminated the relationship."

Those who downplay an affair, far from seeing its lack of affection and superficiality as a blemish, see it as a best arrangement.

“No involvement at all,” one man recalled having an affair with a “fashionable Guangzhou girl who took this kind of thing very naturally.” “She could have no emotion at all.”

Another man said of a similar woman: "She never said 'what do I look like to you?' or 'what are we going to do?' which were nerve-wracking. That was great!"

There is also a 40-year-old housewife who recalled an affair experience when she was 23 or [-] years old, and it was like reciting poetry:
"What I value has never been physical. In this respect, my husband has always been unsurpassable. But I like to look for the interactive relationship between two people in an affair. The accidental eye contact between the two when they passed each other in the shopping mall triggered the initial The impulse to chase each other. Then there is the brewing of the two people's encounter. After dating for several months, a burst of sexual passion finally burst out one day. Then the relationship gradually drifted away, the two became friends, and each looked for another partner. Every time it makes people's hearts sway, but it is also very mysterious. These are things that marriage can't do."

The superficiality of this relationship is not a result of circumstances, but rather a deliberate understatement of the affair by one or both parties.Traditionally, it is generally believed that in an affair relationship, men strive to restrain or maintain some freedom, while women hope that the relationship will be deep, intense, and binding.But unfaithful wives often go beyond ordinary people's perceptions, and prefer to leave the relationship alone.This may be because she is married, has security and status, and they can afford to enjoy innocuous extramarital affairs.

They constantly manipulate and control the development of the relationship in order to keep it within their ideal.Sometimes their biggest concern is controlling their feelings:
"I always try not to let my emotions get out of control, I firmly grasp the initiative of emotions."

"If I think it is important from the beginning, I will be vigilant not to let it develop in depth, so as not to get stuck in it and not get out."

More often they want to control the other person and limit the level of emotional involvement.There was a woman who, as soon as her lover started getting too affectionate, would tell him that she had a business or a domestic affair for the next two or three weeks or something.In doing so, reduce the other person's emotion to a level that she can tolerate.

People who unknowingly go beyond their original intentional relationship rarely prolong their extramarital affairs, because the environment and personal emotions do not allow it.The early death of an extramarital affair is to personal chagrin.A man who once had a real life said:

"I've never loved someone like this before. I realized there was going to be trouble when I was all in and I couldn't help myself. When we broke up, I cried, literally. I don't remember having that experience, nor Wouldn't want to go through it again. Since then I've been cautious about emotional matters. At parties or on dates, I'll relax for a few hours, but the next day I'll remind myself that I have a wife and kids, And a house, and that's where the relationship stops. I refuse to let that happen again."

璐娜
After several superficial affairs, she also encountered a similar situation.For a while, she simply opened the door to her feelings, then slammed it shut and went back to the old ways.

Things arose out of her relationship with a young professor.They spent a night in the hotel that she was quite satisfied with, but that night was the pinnacle of their relationship.Since then, the professor has been less aggressive with her than she would have liked.Overwhelmed with guilt, he didn't call her for almost a week.She had expected him to call him several times a day.

His call finally came.But she had to use provocative language on the phone to convince him to set a time for the next date.After that, he would have lunch with her or have a cup of coffee in the evening with her about every other week, with occasional stopovers in hotels.Evidently, she could see that even occasional gatherings weighed heavily on him.Miss Shen said:
"He's a really nice guy and likes me very much. But there are a lot of things that keep him from being what I'd like him to be: first, he has a heavy teaching load; second, he's a very family-oriented man, spending time outside often He feels guilty. Moreover, his body is not very strong. In short, he can't do everything he should do. Of course, it is difficult for him to satisfy the wild love I am looking forward to."

Luna's affair speaks somewhat of the course of a brief, low-involvement affair: thrilling and dramatic at first, then pushed to physical completion by a powerful combination of teasing, pretense, secrecy, and sex.But the powerful and magical propeller always loses steam very quickly, and the affair returns to sane reality.

It turns out that none of Luna's earlier affairs grew after they started, or developed any content, and that's probably down to the fact that both she and her lover knew they only had a few days to play a fake love game.People who have brief, low-commitment affairs either run away from potentially deep relationships or part ways because they don't handle them well.This pattern may last a lifetime, or it may change due to personal inner changes, and find another relationship.But if there is no change of heart, this type of person may maintain a shallow affair for many years without disrupting the marriage.For example, Luna's affair mentioned above does not seem to have caused any harm to her marriage.It is true that most marriage counselors believe that if a person like this does not expend her psychological and sexual energy outside, and does not seek sexual comfort outside, maybe she will work harder on her marriage and make it a A "good relationship" is intimate, devoted, and typically monogamous.But what is good for one person may not be good for another.A person who lacks the emotional conditions necessary for an intimate marriage will find this "good relationship" distressing and oppressive.For such a person, a "barren" marriage might be better off, and a discreet casual affair might subsidize it without causing trouble.While some infidels in poor marriages do get divorced, the reason for divorce is not that the affair prevented the growth of intimacy between the married couples, but for other reasons: perhaps the marriage was prone to friction and frequent quarrels; There is a mismatch; one partner may not be able to give the other the intimacy and warmth that the other needs.

What effect does a superficial affair have on an intimate and committed marriage?We hear of couples who love each other, are content and close, and where one or both partners have an affair that is superficial, and the affair is beneficial to the marriage or at least not harmful.However, whenever we investigate such cases, we find that such marriages are about harmony rather than intimacy, tolerance rather than contentment, ease rather than intimacy.This does not mean that this marriage is inferior, if it meets the needs of both parties, then it is the best marriage for them.Still, we haven't seen any evidence that loving, fulfilling, close marriages can be improved by, or remain unthreatening by, minor infidelities.

half marriage half extramarital affairs

If the briefest affairs are usually the least invested, the longest-lasting affairs are the most deeply invested and felt.But this is not the case. Some of the most enduring affairs are only moderately committed, and the parties (one or both parties) to such affairs are only half-committed to their own marriages.Marriage and extramarital affairs are more cooperative than competitive, and they often have specific functions, providing different but limited satisfactions.Those who can maintain this combination for a long time.Like and need to make more investment in the dual relationship of marriage and extramarital affairs.Even so, they can only partially reveal themselves or identify with another person, and find it safer to divide their emotional needs between two partners, each giving a part of themselves to the other while concealing the rest.

The aim of this type of affair is not novelty, change, and conquest, but, broadly speaking, the purpose of this type of affair is to make the marriage an addition or ancillary.An extramarital affair, for example, may provide friendship and understanding, or love or attention, that is missing in marriage, yet marriage is still valuable and beneficial because it provides an established social role, a family role, a family foundation, fatherhood, humanness motherhood, the satisfaction of fulfilling personal responsibilities.If the marriage is particularly unpredictable and painful, the main purpose of the auxiliary affair may be to provide comfort.An extramarital partner may not be ideal, and may not end up as a marriage partner, but it is an excellent comforter and restorative.A newspaper reporter, one of our interviewees, described the relationship this way:
"My marriage has been troubled for a long time, especially in the two years before the affair started. My wife was very dissatisfied with my achievements and kept belittling me instead of making further progress. The long-term arguments made me physically and mentally exhausted. I met her while writing a story about young female entrepreneurs.

She's 26, unmarried, and not very popular, but I interviewed her anyway because she seems like a typical up-and-coming corporate star.We were all moved by each other.She thinks I'm great, which makes me feel great, too.She fit my needs so well that we quickly established a regular relationship.I hand in the manuscript for the weekend at noon on Monday, and then rush to her residence.

Zheng Yun and I met once a week, and this relationship lasted for nearly three years.Sometimes I get bored, which is usually the case with relationships where there is no real love.But I can't sever the relationship.My wife and I often quarrel, she criticizes me, scolds me, and the relationship between us is getting worse and worse.But when I went to Zheng Yun's place, everything came alive again.We feel good about each other sexually.But for me, it wasn't just a great sex session, it restored my self-esteem.However, I never really fell in love with Zheng.She's not that brainy or charismatic, as it turns out later on.

Unfortunately, she more or less fell in love with me.The situation was really hard on her.I told her that I am not the kind of man who can easily abandon children. As for my wife, I have been with her since we were young. Even though she is like this now, I can't bear to abandon her.Zheng Yan burst into tears after hearing this, saying that as long as I give her a chance, she can give me real happiness.But I just want the happiness she gives me now is enough.She understands my situation quite well, but I think she has probably been lying to herself, because she has always believed that things will happen that will make her want. "

Sometimes an affair is a social boost rather than an emotional one.In certain wealthy leisure circles, an affair is a status exercise.This kind of extramarital affairs began to become popular in southern China in the 90s and [-]s. It is a long-term extramarital relationship between a wealthy married man and a beautiful woman in a golden house.The lover and mistress are maintained by sex, affection, and even sincere understanding, but they also depend on and are limited by some or all of the financial assistance he provides.He pays her for various services, including her sex.This is tacit on both sides.The basic emotional interaction, though, is a master-slave one.This arrangement does not pose a serious threat to the man's marriage.The mistress also accepts this special but very limited role, and may not engage in any aggressive behavior in the other's pre-existing marriage for many years.Below is an example:
There was a beautiful, frail woman of thirty who was about to divorce her husband.Once, she was invited to participate in the annual reception of the routine chamber of commerce.Sitting next to her was a businessman who was nearly sixty years old in City H (he said his wife was an alcoholic shrew).She knew his reputation, but found him charming and earnest.In the middle of the reception, they were flirting without scruple; by midnight, they were lovers.

After several years of dating, he proposed that she give up her job and move to P City, where he often had business contacts, and he said that he would buy her a house and take care of everything.She thought about it for a while, asked him some financial questions in detail, and readily accepted.

Four years ago, she moved into the house he bought for her with her two teenage daughters, paid for her needs with his monthly checks, and began to become his exclusive woman.She expressed her opinion of the arrangement in the soft, graceful voice of a Southern lady:
"I never asked him if he would divorce for me. He is a very stubborn person. He has been persecuted by his wife for a long time, so I don't want to put any pressure on him. Besides, he was nagged by his wife at the beginning I have to escape home and find other women for fun. I am determined to be different. He returns to his home in City H for one or two nights a month, and spends most of the rest of the time in City P. He told his wife that he is too busy to work. Not going back. He took me to company parties, danced on and off beautiful dance floors, and dined in great restaurants. I would stay at his place for a few days."

Apart from being with him, she and her daughters lived a quiet life at home in the suburbs.They all understood the situation and seemed to accept it.Neighbors knew nothing about her private life and thought she was living off alimony.Her present and future are not guaranteed by contract, but she seems to feel quite secure: the house is in her name.In addition, he also allocated 200 million company option shares to her.She dared not have any wrong thoughts about him:
"I don't want any man to get too interested in me and end up ruining everything. Because if we do break up, I'm sure he'll make me financially safe unless it's my fault. But I don't think we'll break up, Because he needs me. Of course I want him to divorce, he and his wife have separated, and then marry me, but he seems to feel that doing so will ruin an otherwise beautiful relationship. I can't do anything about it. If he does marry me, he must It's because he wants to marry me, not because I want to marry."

Most, however, could not afford to keep a mistress, and would find such a relationship an uncomfortable resemblance to concubinage anyway.

(End of this chapter)