Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I’ve commented that most affairs will burn themselves out fairly quickly. And this is true much of the time. But unfortunately, I hear from plenty of folks dealing with long-term affairs that have lasted months, or in some cases, years or even decades. Trying to move past an affair is very difficult, even when you’re sure that it ended in a relatively timely manner. It’s even harder when it continues to linger on, with seemingly no end in sight.

So why do some affairs last much longer than others? I’ll give you some theories below, in the hopes that it might help if you are dealing with a similar situation.

Why Most Affairs Burn Out: Before I get to the long-term affairs, I want to briefly discuss why most cheating relationships are over relatively quickly. Understanding this will help you understand why a small subset of affairs don’t fall into this category.

Most of the time, the excitement just begins to wear off. The thrill begins to wane and so the cost of keeping the secret and sneaking around just isn’t worth the cost of admission anymore.

Or the affair is discovered. And once this happens, a choice must be made. When given this choice, most people are not going to blow up their marriages just to continue a diversionary relationship that didn’t mean that much.

Finally, sometimes things are moving along relatively okay but one of the affair partners begins to want more from the relationship. Unless both people feel the same way, the relationship will end under the weight of this pressure. Typically, the person who has no interest in leaving their marriage will end the affair.

How A Long-Term Affair Is Different: Now, it is just common sense that long-term affairs won’t have the relationship-ending elements that I’ve discussed above. In other words, you’re not going to have the discovery of the affair, and the thrill is not yet gone. For whatever reason, both parties still want the same things.

Having Their Cake While Eating It Too: Quite often, the affair is allowed to continue because both affair partners can carry on without consequence. They can have their marital cake and they can eat it too. Often, both affair partners are in a stable, long-term committed marriage that may have real history and affection. Detection is less likely in this situation because their spouse trusts them and is going to give them the benefit of the doubt. As such, they’re able to continue on in exactly the same way that they always have. Most of them will insist that they deeply love their spouse, but that they care about their affair partner in a different way. They will continue to participate in and enjoy the benefits of their marriage. But they’ll get something else entirely from the affair.

This situation also makes it more likely that neither affair partner will demand more from the other. Why would they when they are already getting the best of both worlds?

The Affair Relationship May Be Off And On. They May Believe They Just Can’t Quit Each Other: Another possibility is that the affair relationship waxes and wanes. Sometimes, the affair will end as spouses get suspicious or one of the affair partners becomes guilty or invested in their marriage again. And time may go by where the affair partners aren’t in contact.

But then, something will happen or one of them will reach out and they will pick up the affair once again. You’ll often hear them say things like, “it’s like no time passed at all.” Or “we just can’t seem to quit one another.”

Sometimes, they will take this to mean that their attraction or affection for each other is so great that they just can’t seem to end the relationship. So they’ll continue to break away and then come back for more and it becomes an unhealthy, but unending, push and pull.

The Affair Becomes More Of An Emotional Crutch, Habit, Or Friendship Than A Full-Blown Affair: Finally, some affair relationships actually do burn out physically, but it has continued for long enough that the affair partners have developed a reliance or emotional dependence on one another. This is the person that they tell the things they do not tell their spouse. This person is still their emotional outlet during difficult times. There is never an intention to leave the marriage or even to have the passionate physical affair relationship that was there in the beginning. But since the intense physical part of the affair is over, they stay for whatever part still brings comfort or familiarity.

How To Handle The Long-Term Affair: I am always understanding when people resist counseling, but this is a situation that is quite complex and will often greatly benefit from a neutral third party to point out things that you may both miss. It is often much easier to allow the therapist to be the one who pushes your spouse for transparency and accountability, although this should eventually be your goal.

It should be clear that your spouse can no longer enjoy both relationships. He’s already proven that if he can, he will. You’ll have to work extra hard on rebuilding the trust because you’re not dealing with a one-night stand or a momentary lapse. You’re dealing with him carrying this out over and over again, day after day. Therefore, you both must understand what his payoff was and find a healthier alternative.

You must believe that you both can be genuinely happy in this marriage again so that you can trust in it. And you deserve to be happy and secure. This is most definitely one of the most challenging scenarios, but I’ve seen couples overcome it.

My situation was not that long-term, but it was infidelity.  And we did eventually recover.  It it helps, that story is at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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