Frank Pittman, author of "Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy," has spent his life in the middle of other people's affairs: "When I was a young psychiatrist in my 20s, I was fascinated by the stories I heard of adulterous excitement and intrigue, even envious of the intense passion and narrow escapes," he says. "Then I began to notice that the enemy in all these adventure stories was the spouse, and I realized that adulterers live with their greatest enemy - they spend their lives behind enemy lines. In time, the stories began to run together, and I came to see the similarities and the inevitable outcomes. My curiosity lessened and my rescue fantasies were aroused. Since then, I have tried to stop people from risking so much for so little."
Now Pittman, wiser by far, asks, "Why . . . would otherwise sane people - people who buy insurance, who stop for traffic lights, who brush after every meal - risk everything in their lives for a furtive moment of sex?" Pittman does not approach infidelity from a religious or legal posture, but from a position of honesty. He defines infidelity as "a breach of trust, a betrayal of a relationship, a breaking of an agreement." Thus, Pittman would consider as infidelity any behaviors on a spouse's part that perpetually deplete his or her attention, investment, commitment or resources from the mate and the family. Thus, even an affair that does not involve sex, in Pittman's framework, would constitute infidelity because the behaviors of the spouse are secret and break the trust or agreement with the other person.One of the self-tests Pittman uses, in fact, when people ask him if they have committed infidelity is whether they would willingly share their behavior with their spouse.
"Infidelity," observes Pittman, "may not be the worst thing that one marriage partner can do to another, but it may be the most confusing and disorienting and therefore the most likely to destroy the marriage - not necessarily because of the sex, but because of the secrecy and the lies. A lie may be a more direct betrayal than keeping a relevant secret, but the two ultimately amount to much the same thing - the deliberate effort to disorient your partner in order to avoid the inevitable conflict over some breach of the marital agreement."
Infidelity, the primary disruption of families and the most dreaded and devastating experience in a marriage, is fueled by several myths:
1. Everybody is unfaithful; it is normal, expected behavior.
2. Affairs are good for you; an affair may even revive a dull marriage.
3. The infidel must not "love" the spouse - the affair proves it. (Instead, the third party may weaken what once were very strong marital bonds.)
4. The affairee must be "sexier" than the spouse. (Very often, not so, says Pittman).
5. The affair is the fault of the spouse, proof that the spouse has failed the infidel in some way that made the affair necessary. (Not so, stresses Pittman; the marriage may have had problems, but the choice to conduct an affair belongs exclusively with the infidel.)
6. The best approach to the discovery of a spouse's affair is to pretend not to know and thereby avoid a crisis. (Instead, Pittman points out, affairs thrive on secrecy, and their power lies in that secrecy. Addressing the affair often begins to change its very complexion and burst its bubble.)
7. If an affair occurs, the marriage must end in divorce. ("Affairs do great damage. . . . Marriages can recover . . . but it takes a lot of work and pain.") Furthermore, "just as telephones stop ringing once they are answered, affairs must stop before the problems can be approached."
One of the most common forms of infidelity is "Accidental Infidelity" (It Just Happened). "When I listen to stories of accidental infidelity," says Pittman, "I am sometimes reminded of W.C. Field's famous apology: `I'm sorry I was late for this appointment, but on my way here I was taken unexpectedly drunk." Accidental infidelity can happen - can take people by surprise - can cause them to do things they ordinarily wouldn't do, but the accident needs to be cleaned up, advises Pittman. "I find myself thinking of infidelity in somewhat the same way I think of automobile accidents. . . . Just as the accident is happening, and it is too late to stop it, people know their lives are now outside their control.
"My recommendation to people in this situation is, almost without exception, to report the accident, to take full responsibility for making the mistake, to apologize profusely, and to avoid even the slightest hint of blaming the betrayed spouse. Accidents happen. The only thing more dangerous than deciding they are too frightening to talk about is deciding that they are too horrible to overcome."
Pittman also talks about Romantic Affairs, which he calls temporary insanity.
"From the inside, falling in-love may feel like a regression to the womb or a union with the infinite, but from the outside, falling in-love looks like temporary insanity. . . . Unlike loving and being loved, which gives us the security to find comfort and joy in the world, falling in-love can be a dangerous episode of torture and adventure and emotional exercise. It is not a sickness that we diagnose, nor do we ordinarily lock people up or give them medicine for it. The in-love state is a sacred form of insanity, as sacred as cows are in India. We let people who are in-love wander around loose, messing up the landscape, tying up traffic, and doing any . . . fool thing they want. They're not responsible, they're just in-love."
All romances "cool" to a certain point, Pittman points out, "and if the marriage is based solely on romance, in which there is no friendship, no partnership, no com-panion-ship, no sharing of life and the world, no real love, but only the intense preoccupation with each other, such a marriage ends up totally dead when the romance fades. And often those who exist or feed on romantic encounters seek other partners in favor of another romantic `high.' "