Infidelity: beginning of the end

When the fire of a relationship is ignited everybody hopes it to add warmth and spark to their lives but sometimes the same fire burns down all hopes to ashes. Secrecy, cover-up and denial are the hallmarks of toxic binds.

According to an Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, 15 percent of wives and 25 percent of husbands have had extramarital sex. Add emotional affairs and other non-physical intimacy, and the numbers go up by 20 percent.

Many emotional affairs are a byproduct of increasingly intense and collegial workplace atmospheres. Over half of work friendships become something more.

“The stereotype is the vice president of the corporation having a thing with the cute typist,” says Shirley Glass, PhD, author of Not "Just Friends": Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal (Free Press, 2002). “But now the bonds between men and women working together are based on much more: similar interests and social backgrounds, in a highly-charged atmosphere.”

Infidelity is usually the outcome of an emotional affair which in turn starts innocently enough as a friendship. Through investing emotional energy and time with someone outside the marriage relationship, the former friendship can begin to form a strong emotional bond which hurts the intimacy of the marriage relationship.

While there are those who believe that an emotional affair is harmless, most marriage experts view an emotional affair as cheating without having a sexual relationship. Remember, that innocent friendship can be the beginning of the end.

When infidelity reaches its peak the relation becomes dangerous. Dangerous relationships are apparently easier to endure than to address, so it is not astonishing that the murder of a wife, an ex-wife or lover usually takes everyone by surprise.

In these potentially dangerous relationships, things appear to be normal at first, but the female soon begins to feel as though she's being controlled. This is the time to STOP things and get away. Even if he makes a scene and doesn't want to be dumped, don't feel sorry for him and go back. It'll only be tougher to leave him next time.

The best time to avoid problems is, at the first sign when you start feeling smothered by being in a relationship. I hope you won't have any of this kind of trouble and that each of your relationships is healthy and provides growth.