When couples decide to get married, it is a joyous occasion and emotions run high. Both partners love one another and cannot see ever drifting apart. Couples that are dating and then newly married often show displays of affection, appreciation, admiration, and so on without even thinking twice. Newly married couples naively enter marriage thinking everything will be rainbows and sunshine. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
It can be easy for married couples to let the monotonous routines of life take over. Suddenly, displays of affection are less frequent, and admiration and appreciation expressed less often. Couples can get caught up in the day to day tasks of going to work, cleaning the house, taking care of the kids, and so on. Suddenly, conversations focus more on the business of everyday life and romantic life fizzles. When marriage relationships turn more into a type of business relationship, it opens the door for danger.
When the romance dies in a marriage, one or both partners feel as if their sexual and emotional needs are not being met. When someone else of the opposite work starts to show interest in him/her at work, church, school, or so forth, it can be easy for that spouse to feel excited and reciprocate. Finally, someone is "meeting" their emotional needs. Then, affairs happen. The affair is new, exciting, romantic. When the other spouse finds out, the marriage struggles and sometimes dies. The spouse that had the affair sometimes divorces his/her spouse and marries the person he/she had the affair with, thinking that the romance will continue and will be as exciting as ever.
The sad thing so many people come to realize is that such sexual infidelity does not bring the excitement or happiness they had hoped for. After marrying the affair partner, life is exciting for a little while, until the monotony sets in again and the relationship becomes more like a business relationship again. Too late that spouse realizes that the affair was not the solution to his/her emotional needs not being met, but working on his/her current marriage is what would have done it. The spouse bemoans their fate as they learn the excitement of the affair came from the secrecy, wrongness, and anxiety it produced.
This morning I was watching the case of a man in Utah that was accused of murdering his wife. He wanted to marry the woman he had been having an affair with without getting divorced and thus having to face the shame of being a divorced man in church. Watching the trial on television I suddenly thought about affairs starting because one of the spouses feels as if their needs aren't being met and/or that they are bored and an affair seems exciting. Then, how sad it would be for that man, after murdering his wife (if he did) and marrying the woman he had an affair with, to learn that he truly did love his wife and that he is stuck in the same monotony that he was with his wife and that the only exciting thing was the secrecy and wrongness of the affair.
The best way to prevent an affair is to nurture the relationship that you have now. We always hear the adage "the grass is always greener on the other side". I prefer the phrase made by Robert Fulghum that "the grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the
fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it
is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend
the grass wherever you may be." Tend to your marriage now. Take just a few minutes out of every day to show appreciation for one another, show affection, express admiration, and take an interest in your spouse by just talking. Go on a weekly date. Do the things that you did when you were dating, things that seemed to come so easy and naturally, and the romance will burn again.
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