Affairs Are Like Cancer

According to the Associated Press and the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 22% of men admit to cheating on their significant other, while 14% of women admit to infidelity. And according to a 2013 study referenced in the Huffington Post, women had more affairs in the past two decades than in previous years. Clearly, cheating on our partners is increasing and it’s becoming easier to do through work, through connecting with past flames online and even dating web sites dedicated to cheating spouses, namely Ashley Madison.

But the problem in our marriages isn’t actually the affair. Or, at least, the problems in our marriages aren’t limited to ONLY the affair. But when an affair occurs, it becomes the singular most important thing that our partners want to talk about and focus upon. 

The one thing everyone wants to fix and heal…

The one thing we want to dissect and gather evidence about…

The one thing they want to wrestle to the ground and understand. 

Where there is an affair, there is also great hurt and mistrust that gets created. Plus, it’s something specific and tangible that we can all point to that is now the cause for our sadness or anger or confusion in our marriages. 

But when we place the focus only on the affair, we miss the deeper opportunity to understand and heal what was broken in the relationship that created fertile ground for the affair to occur in the first place. The affair is a symptom of the problems that existed in your marriage before the infidelity ever occurred.

Affairs do not happen in emotionally healthy and connected committed relationships. Period. So the relationship was broken before the affair was ever an issue and that’s the piece that needs to be healed in the relationship if the marriage is to survive.

Did you and your spouse grow more distant over time as you each became more and more distracted with life, with kids, and with work?

Have you not felt seen or heard or understood by the one person on the planet that is supposed to see and hear and understand you? Or did you not feel wanted, loved and appreciated by that one person that promised to want, love and appreciate you? 

Have there been days, months or even years that go by without a touch, a kiss, or even a kind word to one another?

I think of affairs the same way that I think about cancer.

BD Phillips says, “Cancer is that awful word we all fear when we go to the doctor, but in that brief dark moment we hear it, the world we live in and the people we share it with begin to illuminate things we did not even pay attention to.”

Everyone wants to talk about the cancer and fix the cancer with chemo, radiation, and any medicine we can throw at it. No one wants to talk about what caused the healthy cells within the body to turn cancerous, to understand and heal the root cause. And when you don’t treat the cancer (the root cause of the problems in your marriage), it spreads and becomes a bigger problem (an affair). 

This presents us with an opportunity. An opportunity to understand what’s been broken in your marriage that needs fixing or tending to. What old wounds need healed? What old ways of being in a relationship with one another are not working and how can we be in a relationship with one another in a new way, a different way?

Of course, trust needs to be re-established and eventually forgiveness would need to occur. Of course, apologies need to be given and felt as often as necessary to heal the hurt of an affair. And of course, there needs to be a mutual commitment to stop all future occurrences of infidelity. 

But the deeper opportunity is to gain clarity about what caused the cancer in the relationship in the first place and tend to the healing of that sickness within the relationship.

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