We both agree that her life is enviable. And yet, she is risking it all. S ecluded from the responsibilities of everyday life, the parallel universe of the affair is often idealized, infused with the promise of transcendence. For some people, like Priya, it is a world of possibility—an alternate reality in which they can reimagine and reinvent themselves. Then again, it is experienced as limitless precisely because it is contained within the limits of its clandestine structure.
It is a poetic interlude in a prosaic life. Forbidden-love stories are utopian by nature, especially in contrast with the mundane constraints of marriage and family. A prime characteristic of this liminal universe—and the key to its irresistible power—is that it is unattainable. Affairs are by definition precarious, elusive, and ambiguous.
Because we cannot have our lover, we keep wanting. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and keeps the flame of desire burning. Reinforcing this segregation of the affair from reality is the fact that many, like Priya, choose lovers who either could not or would not become a life partner. By falling for someone from a very different class, culture, or generation, we play with possibilities that we would not entertain as actualities.
Few of these types of affairs withstand discovery. One would think that a relationship for which so much was risked would survive the transition into daylight. Under the spell of passion, lovers speak longingly of all the things they will be able to do when they are finally together. Yet when the prohibition is lifted, when the divorce comes through, when the sublime mixes with the ordinary and the affair enters the real world, what then?
Some settle into happy legitimacy, but many more do not. In my experience, most affairs end, even if the marriage ends as well. However authentic the feelings of love, the dalliance was only ever meant to be a beautiful fiction. The affair lives in the shadow of the marriage, but the marriage also lives in the center of the affair. Without its delicious illegitimacy, can the relationship with the lover remain enticing?
If Priya and her tattooed beau had their own bedroom, would they be as giddy as they are in the back of his truck? T he quest for the unexplored self is a powerful theme of the adulterous narrative, with many variations. Others find themselves drawn by the memory of the person they once were. And then there are those whose reveries take them back to the missed opportunity, the one that got away, and the person they could have been.
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote that in modern life,. Bauman speaks to our nostalgia for unlived lives, unexplored identities, and roads not taken. When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: What other stories could we have been part of?
Affairs offer us a view of those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is the revenge of the deserted possibilities. Dwayne had always cherished memories of his college sweetheart, Keisha. Over the years, he had often asked himself what would have happened had their timing been different.
Enter Facebook. The digital universe offers unprecedented opportunities to reconnect with people who exited our lives long ago. Never before have we had so much access to our exes, and so much fodder for our curiosity. Lo and behold, they were both in the same city. She, still hot, was divorced. It seems to me that in the past decade, affairs with exes have proliferated, thanks to social media. These retrospective encounters occur somewhere between the known and the unknown—bringing together the familiarity of someone you once knew with the freshness created by the passage of time.
The flicker with an old flame offers a unique combination of built-in trust, risk taking, and vulnerability. In addition, it is a magnet for our lingering nostalgia. The person I once was, but lost, is the person you once knew. P riya is mystified and mortified by how she is putting her marriage on the line.
The constraints she is defying are also the commitments she cherishes. No conversation about relationships can avoid the thorny topic of rules and our all-too-human desire to break them. Our relationship to the forbidden sheds a light on the darker and less straightforward aspects of our humanity. Bucking the rules is an assertion of freedom over convention, and of self over society. Acutely aware of the law of gravity, we dream of flying.
Our conversations help Priya bring clarity to her confusing picture. If he knew, he would be crushed. He would never believe it. She may be right. Or perhaps it would. Later that evening, Steven picked me up and knew something was upsetting me.
I spilled the beans. I was a tornado. Steven did tell me about the video: At the end of it, his wife exclaimed that Steven was a wonderful husband, father and lover. I was stunned. The funeral was the hardest day in my life. I was trapped in a room with his wife, and I had to watch her try to comfort him and he her. I wanted him. I wanted him to announce to the world that it was me he needed by his side.
Everything changed for me that day. I really got it. Sex with the Spouse Avoid it. At least for a while. Finally, about a year after my affair started-and after a blow-out fight-I told my husband that I was done. No more. We lived together for many, many more months. Oddly, we never discussed fulfilling our needs outside the marriage. There was a deafening silence. Jealousy can infuse itself into an affair. Steven was never jealous about my husband and me and sex.
He was jealous of everybody else-and I mean everybody else. I had never dealt with that before. I found it flattering and really annoying. My own green-eyed monster appeared whenever Steven had sex with his wife-and it was a topic that I asked about all the time.
Circle of Trust Bartenders, wait staffs and doormen are reliable. They are trained. You can go to a restaurant one night with your husband, the next with your lover, and no one is the wiser.
The more difficult part is whether you should share the information that you are cheating with friends. It is dangerous. The more information floating out there in the universe, the more the possibility exists of getting caught.
I never followed this rule. I told all of my friends, day by day, month by month. The paradox was that I was trying to be authentic and truthful within a weird framework of lies and deceit. I was feeling powerful, alive, sexy and purposeful. I wanted everyone to know that I was finally happy. Lying to my husband was one thing; lying to my friends was another. It tests friendships. It tests morality and loyalty. Telling friends burdens them. You are requiring them to keep a secret, and it makes it difficult for them to look at you or your spouse.
You are a threat: Their marriage suddenly feels like it is at risk. If I could do it, they could do it. Be ready to be judged-and harshly.
My true dear friends understood my predicament, understood my deep frustrations and supported my decision. They were all extremely reliable. It is never appropriate and only leads to hurt feelings and emotional turmoil. I got really good at denying. I used denial in all aspects of my life. I could look my husband in the eye and flatly refute any accusations. I desperately wanted to protect my affair. Telling my husband that I was in love with someone else, that I was intimate with another, would only dwarf our own martial issues.
But they too live in a perpetual state of denial. It may be that you need to meet in the middle with some things—especially if you have very different approaches to certain parts of your relationship.
Be positive: remind yourselves what you liked about each other when you first met. With enough work, you can find your way back to that place. Keep trying. And once you get into the habit, it does get easier. How we can help Relationship Counselling can help you and your partner have difficult conversations in a safe space.
If a couple decides to stay together, they must identify areas of improvement and commit to working on them. The therapist can help the couple acknowledge the areas of the relationship in which trust has already been rebuilt. Then the betrayed partner can be progressively exposed to situations that provide further reassurance they can trust their partner without having to constantly check on them.
But if therapy works for two thirds of couples, it leaves another one third who experience no improvement. What then? If the relationship is characterised by many unresolved conflicts, hostility, and a lack of concern for one another, it may be best to end it. Ultimately, relationships serve the function of meeting our attachment needs of love, comfort and security. But ending a relationship is never easy due to the attachment we develop with our romantic partner. Not only do we grieve the loss of the relationship no matter how good or bad , but we grieve over whether we will find another who will fulfil our needs.
The period of separation distress varies from person to person. If the couple decides to end the relationship and are still in therapy, the therapist can help them work through their decision in a way that minimises feelings of hurt.
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