Hastings House Book 'Adultery: The Forgivable Sin'

MYTHS ON ADULTERY
You’ve probably heard that 50 percent of marriages end in separation, but did you know that adultery occurs in eight out of ten marriages? This is according to Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil in her book “Adultery: The Forgivable Sin”(Hastings House Book Publishers, 1994).
With so many marriages breaking up due to infidelity, how can couples be expected to stay together?
Loyalty is not a guarantee that love persists, nor an extramarital affair is a sign that love has faded, so says Dr. Weil, a member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.
According to Dr. Weil, with enough love, hard work, understanding and commitment, adulterous patterns can be broken. Other experts also believe that it’s possible for a relationship
to recover—and even flourish—after adultery.
“Heart attacks are not always fatal—and neither is adultery. Cardiac patients can survive and even thrive, once they find a healthier way of living. After an affair, a couple can do the same by finding a healthier way of loving,” Dr. Weil writes.
Adultery can be a painful experience. Dr. Weil, a family therapist in New York who has often appeared on Oprah as well as CBS, NBC and Fox News, points out: “I also know from my own experience, both personal and professional, that adultery can be a forgivable sin. In fact, adultery can even be a way—albeit dysfunctional—to try and stabilize a floundering relationship.”
While extramarital affairs are common, very few understand it very well. Most of us simply, ignore, excuse and condemn this problem, without understanding it first.
In her book, Dr. Weil points out five important points regarding adultery to correct what she calls “dangerous misconceptions.”

MYTH NUMBER 1: ADULTERY IS ABOUT SEX.
According to Dr. Weil, adultery does not necessarily sweep lovers along on a storm of passion. In most couples, the guilty spouse is trying to hold off an empty feeling left by childhood hurts and frustrations—especially if he or she is the adult child of an adulterer.
Frequently, the sex is better at home and the marriage partner is at least as good-looking. When Dr. Weil for example conducted a random survey of a hundred couples, only one of those who admitted to having affairs gave “poor sexual relationship” as the reason. More often, the attraction was emotional rather than physical.
Any activity or relationship that takes away too much time and energy from life with your partner is a form of unfaithfulness.
That may include workaholism, obsession with children, sports or gambling addiction, as well as emotional affairs.
MYTH NUMBER 2: ADULTERY DOES NOT INFLUENCE CHILDREN.
According to Dr. Weil, there is growing evidence that there is an emotional factor in adulterous behavior that is transferred to the children.
Youngsters can sense that something is wrong even at a very tender age—children as young as two years old have stunned their parents by babbling about Mommy or Daddy leaving. They may base these intuitions on seen behavior or overheard words. Year later, these adult children of adulterers will act out their legacy without even knowing it, through their own or their partner’s philandering or other dysfunctional behavior.
MYTH NUMBER 3: ADULTERY CAN HELP STRENGTHEN MARRIAGE.
There’s an alarming tendency among some therapists to suggest that infidelity can stabilize a marriage. Some adulterers, meanwhile, contend that extracurricular sex will teach participants how to be better lovers, to everyone’s joy.
But Dr. Weil says that the idea that infidelity can enrich a relationship would be laughable if it were not so
destructive.
Yes, you may work your way through an affair to find, after it’s over, your marriage is stronger—but it requires incredible honesty and dedication, and it’s painful.
MYTH NUMBER 4: ADULTERY IS HARMLESS.
Yes, extracurricular sex is a pleasure—one of the reasons betrayers have such a hard time giving up their lovers is that it feels good and it’s flattering to have someone around who always have to nurse through the flu or argue with about the hosework.
Forbidden sex can seem to be nothing more than a delicious indulgence, like chocolate cake.
But according to Dr. Wil, who is also the author of “Make Up, Don’t Break Up: Finding and Keeping Love for Singles and Couples,” this “simple pleasure” is more comparable to cocaine than chocolate—addictive and deadly. Everyone in a family suffers from an affair—particularly the children.
Dr. Weil says we can understand the reasons for having affairs without excusing them. The damage that they can do can take generations to undo. Infidelity masks the real problems in the individual and the relationship.

MYTH NUMBER 5: ADULTERY HAS TO END IN SEPARATION.
Even if you never forget, you can learn to forgive. “Ninety-eight percent of my patients are able to renew their marriages, after they dedicate themselves to forgiveness and adopt a new attitude about their marraiges,” writes Dr. Weil.
If you can come to recognize the real motivations for adultery and learn the skills to deal with the underlying problems, you will get through the trauma.
The effects of adultery is indeed devastating and leaves an indelible mark in our lives and our children’s and even their children’s children. Meanwhile, here are some astonishing facts about marriage and extramarital affairs from the book “Sexual Detours” by Dr. Holly Hein:
• Nearly 70% of all married men and 60% of married women have had affairs. That’s two out of every three marriages.
• 50% of women and 33% of men remain angry for ten years after divorce.
• Women have more trouble starting new relationships than divorced men do.
• More than 90% of divorces in long-standing marriages involve infidelities some time during the marriage.
• More than 50% may be involved in a current affair, yet only 25% cite an affair as an actual reason for divorce.
• 80% of those who divorce during an affair regret the decision.
• Over 75% who marry partners on an affair eventually divorce.
• The average affair lasts two to four years.
• If an affair becomes public it is doomed.
• If an affair replaces the marriage, it is subject to the same emotional stresses as the marriage but it is twice as likely to fracture.
• An affair prevents binding ties from being formed, eventually it has nowhere to go. Sooner or later it will suffocate in secrecy.
• Affairs die for the same reason as marriage, lack of intimacy.