The question I have been married to the same man for years. However, I keep going over what happened 45 years ago when my husband had an affair. I was in my 20s with four young children and I was young and naive. It took a long time for me to get over it. It’s only recently that I’ve asked him about it. He says he was flattered that someone was interested. Why do I still have it at the back of my mind? Can you please let me know why?
Philippa’s answer It’s still in your mind because you haven’t had a decent explanation from him – his explanation of feeling flattered doesn’t really cover it – and so there are unanswered questions. If you haven’t got an agreement to have an open relationship, when a partner is unfaithful it can be devastating. And memories don’t necessarily get laid down in date order with the furthest away event disappearing into the distance like a dot. Traumatic events can still feel as big as they ever were, so why wouldn’t you be turning it over in your mind all these years later? It is completely normal to do this.
Why is an affair so traumatic? Because when you are in a monogamous relationship and one of you strays, the intimate bond between you is broken. What that bond means, so long as it remains unbroken, is safety. Your closest relationship is your sanctuary. It is a place where you can relax and be both vulnerable and safe. It means you are not on your own. If you think about it in evolutionary terms, in prehistory no single individual could survive on their own, they needed people close to help them stay alive. We haven’t evolved so much since those times that even if someone strays these days, it doesn’t just result in hurt feelings, it may feel like a threat to your very existence. As if the ground beneath your feet has disappeared.
Affairs often happen when there is a communication problem between partners. Sometimes a spouse fears opening up and showing their vulnerabilities, and admitting their dependence and needs. It may feel easier to argue or accuse (your husband’s assertion that “someone was interested” does sounds like a passive-aggressive accusation) rather that admit what they see as weaknesses in themselves. This leads to loneliness, which then creates a vacancy for intimacy that can, in turn, lead to an affair.
Having young children does mean that parents’ personal needs may be put on hold for a while and it can seem easier to have an affair rather than to talk about what our needs are. It seems so tragic that more talking and understanding – rather than acting out by having an affair – wasn’t done at the time, but often men are brought up to act strong and tough, rather than to talk about their feelings and vulnerabilities.
Sometimes the accusations and arguing can lead to a dynamic of one person having to be right and the other wrong, which then can result in some developing the belief that they are uncared for – which, again, can lead to an affair. Or the problem might be about one – or both – of you being afraid of airing any complaint towards the other. If you don’t argue or won’t discuss disparities between you, and instead dance around differences rather than work through them, then many subjects become taboo. Not airing differences can result in you being left alone with them, meaning you won’t feel so close to your spouse and this leads to loneliness.
Then there is a real danger that the solution to the loneliness is an affair. And, often in conflict-avoidant couples, the straying partner is careless, as if unconsciously they want to be found out because this will force them to look at their relationship to see where they’ve been missing each other.
Another common reason for an affair is what I call the split-self affair, when a husband (because it is usually a man) likes the idea of himself as a responsible family man with perfect wife and children, but also wants to love a mistress and manages to keep two lives going – almost like having two identities.
People who have serial affairs are usually either sex addicts or find the reality of a long-term relationship too complicated, so keep starting new ones. Although it doesn’t sound as though this was the cause in your case.
I’ve offered up all these types of affairs in case they are useful in helping you understand what might have been an underlying cause for your husband’s affair or, if you talk again about this with your partner, they may help him to understand why the affair might have happened and this might help you both gain closure around it and a deeper understanding of each other.
You describe yourself when you were in your 20s as “young and naive”. Maybe what you mean is that you knew how to trust someone, how to surrender fully to them. I don’t call that naive, I call it knowing how to love. And when you love like that and you are betrayed, it hurts. It hurts a whole lot. It can also feel very unsafe. So that’s why you are still thinking about it. It wasn’t trivial, it was significant and, as we get older, significant events from our past don’t necessarily fade, it is common that they become more in focus than ever.
For further help, contact relate.org.uk
Every week Philippa Perry addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Philippa, please send your problem to askphilippa@guardian.co.uk. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
