11/10/2024

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An Affair – The Wake Up Call That Will Save Your Marriage

An Affair – The Wake Up Call That Will Save Your Marriage

When a spouse is involved in an affair most husbands and wives fail to understand why the spouse did this. When both of you made the decision to get married almost certainly you believed that you knew your loved one well. After all, you chose to spend the rest of your lives with each other.

So what changed between then and now?

Thinking back to the start of the relationship the two of you were on your best behavior. Compared to the present day it may seem that your spouse was a totally different person then.

You were convinced that you had found your soul mate with whom you planned to share and enjoy all that married life had to offer. At that time you looked forward to a married life filled with devotion, enthusiasm and laced with romance.

However, married life often holds many unpredicted challenges, setbacks, surprises and joys.

Not long after the thrill of the wedding day, subtle but steady changes start eating away at your relationship as both of you settle into home and family life routines. It’s not long before you become aware that day-to-day responsibilities of married life have little in common with romance.

So what has changed between now and then? Since then, you have found that now there are things about each other that neither one of you saw when you were dating. Certain things in your partner that you tolerated before now take on a more acute dimension in the close quarters of marriage and may have become irritating.

The same daily routine sets in and dulls the marriage into boredom. Indifference towards each other starts to develop resulting in less communication on important relationship issues. All people change with time and in the closeness of married life adjusting or adapting to these changes plays a huge role. Failure in this area can lead to conflicts, arguments, misunderstandings and disillusionment in your partner and vice versa.

Under this environment couples often resort to anger, disrespect and demands as a way to resolve marital problems.

The end result

The sum total of all these factors is the development of an emotional, mental and physical gap that results in unfulfilled needs in either spouse. Affairs happen when the needs of one spouse are not being met by the other. A person in a loving relationship has no need to suddenly, out of the blue, go and seek another lover. No such thought would ever enter your mind when you were dating and right after your marriage vows simply because your mutual needs were being met.

The needs can be physical fulfillment or emotional needs, or both. If you are not satisfying your spouse’s needs your spouse will find someone that can. When this happens, the consequences are devastating to the injured spouse. The broken trust after years of marriage is shattered; the heartache and disappointment are difficult to cope with.

If you happen to be in a situation where your spouse has been involved in an affair it does not mean that your marriage has to be over. You and your spouse have spent an important part of your lives towards building a lifetime with each other and the affair is a wake-up call to both sides that there are problems in the relationship.

As unlikely as it may seem, an affair presents an opportunity to refocus on the problems in the relationship. Through open and frank communications and a good dose of understanding, it is an opportunity for you to bring back what existed prior to the affair and to develop a much healthier and much stronger relationship