Once an affair has been uncovered, we often ask – from the pained position of the person betrayed – when it began? We fantasize that pinpointing the precise moment promises to shed light on the motivations and on possible ways to prevent any further disasters from happening in the future.
There is understandably a hunt for the exact time when the two straying individuals met and the physical contact began. We think of how two people had a drink after a business dinner or met online or flirted at a party and agreed to meet up a few days later. We fixate on the exact details: when their knees touched under the table, when one of them lightly put their arm round the other’s waist, when they first lied about where they were going or who they were text messaging in the middle of the night.
This kind of detective work feels obvious, but it overlooks the complexity: the start of an affair should not be equated with the moment when two straying people met. Affairs begin long before there is someone to have an affair with. The beginning of affairs originate from certain initial disconnection that opens up within a subtly fracturing couple. The affair predates, possibly by many years, the arrival of any actual lover.
Additionally, affairs begin long before the meeting at the business conference or the flirtation. The key is not to fixate on the trip to California or the login details of the cellphone. The whole notion of who is to blame and for what started it is immensely more complicated and less clear cut.
One should be focusing on certain conversations that didn’t go well in the kitchen three summers ago or the sulk in the bedroom night after night or the taxi ride home from vacation five years before. The drama began long before anything dramatic unfolded.
This is how some of the microscopic but real causes might be laid out by a partner who eventually strayed:
Unending busy-ness: it was a Sunday morning, your beloved had been busy for months on a big project and you’ve been very understanding. Now it was over and you were looking forward to some closeness and a trip to the Cape. But there was suddenly something new that they needed to look at on their phone; you glanced over at their face lit up by the glow of the screen. Their eyes looked cold, determined and focused elsewhere. Or they suddenly hatched a plan to reorganize the basement just when at last you thought you might have had a quiet weekend in Narragansett.
Neglect: We were away on an exhausting trip and in a break between meetings, we fought for the chance to call them. They picked up, but the television was up loud in the background: they had forgotten you had to give a speech and it felt a little humiliating to have to remind them and then hear their dull, unexcited ‘great’ in response.
Shaming: We were with some new friends, people we didn’t know that well and wanted to create a good impression. Our partner was looking to amuse them, opted to tell everyone a story about how we once showed the wrong slides at family vacation. They know how to tell a good story and there was a lot laughter.
Ownership: Without discussing it, they arranged that we’d both go and have lunch with their parents. It wasn’t so much that we minded going – it was the fact that they didn’t feel the need to ask if we wanted to go and if the timing was convenient. On another occasion without even mentioning it, they bought a new car and got rid of the old one; it was as if we had no say at all. Sometimes they’d just tell us what to do – “take the trash out” “pick up some things at Eastside” “put on different shoes”– without adding ‘please’ or “would you mind.” Or “it would be appreciated if …”. Just a few words would have made a very significant difference.
Flirting: We were at a party with them and we saw them across the room: they were bending towards this person, saying something; they were laughing seductively; they put their hand on the back of the other person’s chair. Later they said it had been a very boring conversation.
One too many arguments: It wasn’t the basic fact of having disagreements, it was the sheer number of them – and their unending, repetitive, abusive nature. One that sticks in the memory was when we were in Aruba and things should have been happy for once – and yet they chose once again to ramp up the tension about the Thai takeout. We remember arguing and at the same time, one part of our mind disassociating, looking down at the two of us standing in the living room with grumpy faces – and wondering ‘Why?’
Lack of tenderness: we were walking together at the Farmer’s Market and we reached out to hold their hand but they failed to notice; another time they were doing something in the kitchen and we put an arm around their shoulder and they said sharply ‘not now.’ In bed we’re always the one to turn towards them and kiss them goodnight; they respond, but they never, ever initiate. This hurts more than it seems normal or possible to say.
Sexual disengagement: there was a sexual idea we’d been getting interested in but we felt awkward about mentioning it to them; we tried to give a few hints, but they didn’t let out the impression that they were curious, they didn’t encourage us to expand; they gave us the sense that it would be a lot more convenient if we just kept whatever it was that excited us to ourselves.
Examining these scenarios individually, none of them may be very dramatic. Some little version of one may be happening pretty much every day. And it’s not all one way: both parties are probably doing some of these things quite regularly, without particularly noticing or meaning to.
It is common, when an affair is discovered or disclosed, to become an investigative prosecutor: to seize a phone, put a GPS tracking system on their car and ask the person who ‘cheated’ in detail where they have been; to read through their emails and parse every receipt. But such perseverance is a little late, a little misdirected and rather too self-serving.
We should look further back than the moment when a lover came on the scene. The revolution didn’t begin with the sexual act or the dirty texts and with the actual storming of our domestic refuge; it began on a sunny innocent afternoon many years before, when there was still a lot of goodwill, when a hand was given, and when the partner was perhaps fatefully careless about how they received it. That might be a more painful account of our relationship and its troubles than either one of us is ready to contemplate for now, but it may also be a more accurate and ultimately a more useful one.
If this resonates and you are ready to get the blood circulating again through your hearts towards healing and reconnection, there is hope. This requires us to work with our minds to transform our hearts. We have to exchange comfort for consciousness and to be more curious than critical and dispirited. Call for 401-782-7899 to schedule an initial consultation.
Peace and blessings, Paula
