Infidelity: How My Marriage Made Me Do It is a

Infidelity: How My Marriage Made Me Do It is a Cop-out

Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may hear something like this: I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is dead. There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone. Weve grown apart. I cant stand the marriage. There was nothing happening in the marriage and the affair just happened.

These statements are rationalizations and fail to get at the underlying issues.

Key points:

1. Its as if a marriage is an animal gone bad. A marriage does not have a life of its own. In reality, there is no such thing as a marriage. One is married as a result of making some promises and signing a paper at one point. After the paper is signed, two people continue communicating and acting toward one another in particular ways that they hope will help them get what they individually want. Just as there is no marriage, there is no such thing as a relationship. There are, however, ways of relating for which each person is responsible. Remember the comedian Flip Wilson (that dates me) and his The devil made me do it skit?

2. We idealize marriage or romantic relationships with the...