slippery

Advanced Relationship Skills

Couples - Families - Singles - Seniors

From
W. Shuford Davis, Ph.D

The Slippery Slope to an Affair

Most affairs are slipped into over time. A person talks to someone and begins to form an inappropriate emotional intimacy separate from their spouse. It is a process beginning with fantasy, dwelling on the possibility, elaborating the fantasy, formulating a plan, rehearsing the conversations and plan, rationalizing the “rightness” of the affair, and finally acting on all the above.

Here are some clear signs you are on the slippery slope to an affair.

Talking to the other person more than your spouse about personal intimate issues.

Complaining about your spouse especially deficiencies in attention, affection, or sexually.

Sharing every fight or disagreement between you and your spouse with the other person.

Deeper emotional sharing usually develops an emotional affair. Feelings of closeness, being understood, respected, not judged, accepted “for who I am”, a euphoric sense of unconditional love are believed to flow from the other person. Often a comparison to the spouse evolves and gradually an idealized belief develops that the other person loves me more than my spouse does.

Since humans tend to want to make love when they feel love, sexual fantasy often parallels the emotional affair. The slope becomes more slippery and steeper.

Sharing sexual fantasies, dreams or thoughts is especially dangerous when shared about the other person.

Buying sexually suggestive cards or gifts for the other person.

Crossing the physical line with a kiss or sexual touch heightens extreme vulnerability to an affair.

Verbalizing the possibility of an affair to the other person.

Planning the first meeting. Rehearsing, over and over, what to say, what it will be like.

The sexual fantasies are often accompanied by the freedom fantasy.

The freedom fantasy is obsessional thinking about being single, or that your spouse suddenly wants a divorce, or your spouse is killed in an accident or just disappears leaving you free to pursue the affair.