Monotonous Monogamy and the Emotional Affair My Beginning with Stephanie In the beginning, my relationship with Stephanie was anything but monotonous. I first saw her on a church retreat she attended with her boyfriend of three years. From the first moment I saw her I knew he wasn't right for her. The fact that he went to bed early Saturday evening, leaving me with the opportunity to impress her with my skills as a singing troubadour, only confirmed my belief. Alas, as the weekend drew to a close I failed to get her number, but not to be discouraged I called her good friend and acquired the necessary information. It was 8:17PM, only a few hours after I last had seen her when I made my fortuitous call. "How would you like to get together next weekend?" I asked. "John's in the living room and he just asked me to marry him" she replied. "I first need to give him an answer." Her boyfriend had literally just said, "Will you marry me?" when the phone rang. In those days there were no answering machines so Stephanie had stepped into the bedroom to answer the phone. Without skipping a beat I asked, "When do you think you'll know by?" "I think Wednesday," she told me. "Then I'll call back on Wednesday." Thankfully when Wednesday came she said yes which marked the beginning of our relationship over 40 years ago. The first stage of our relationship was torrid. I proposed within the first two months of our meeting. Nothing in life was more enjoyable than spending time with my girl and the only thing limiting that enjoyment was the 123 miles separating Lubbock from Amarillo. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" certainly seemed appropriate in our case. When apart, I was miserable, but when we were together I was lit up. "Then We Got Married . . . ." At that moment we went from wanting what we didn't have, to at times, having who we didn't want. At the start our relationship had been about enjoying one another, but once we married it became about pleasing one another. I now felt responsible for her happiness and began trying to meet her needs in the same way she now began trying to make me happy. As time went on, instead of enjoying one another as we once had we now felt the increasing responsibility for pleasing one another and meeting each other's needs. The only problem was, in my opinion, she was impossible to please and I'm sure she felt I was just as difficult. No matter how hard I tried it was never good enough.I was certain she wasn't as committed in her quest of pleasing me as I was in pleasing her. As years went by we seemed to drift further and further apart. Where was the talk of man and mate that at first had captured our hearts? Why had things become so dull and commonplace? Bad Marriages Don't Cause Affairs . . . Bad Choices Do Before I go any further, I don't think bad marriages cause affairs, bad choices do. Nor do I think good marriages prevent affairs, but they might help eliminate some of the temptation we face. Contrary to many memes and tweets out there,it's impossible to affair-proof a marriage we can only affair-proof ourselves. However, part of affair-proofing ourselves comes through our own journey of growing up both as an individual and in our marriage. Immaturity along with lack of investment in one's relationship can certainly set the stage for infidelity. But certainly many couples can relate to what happened with Stephanie and me. Instead of ongoing flames of passion burning for our mate, we end up at a place of ‘monotonous monogamy' where life becomes routine and boring. What dulls the passion and energy from which our relationship's spring? Typically, while we crave some illicit list of reasons, it's often times nothing more than expectations and routine. Pitfall #1 of Monogamy: A Paradigm Shift To begin, our goals shift. In the beginning we're about enjoying one another, once married we move to a paradigm where we believe it's about pleasing each other. It's your job to meet my needs in the same way it's now my job to meet your needs. But once I'm responsible for pleasing you, who then becomes responsible for my success? You!!! I can try has hard as I want, but if Stephanie's in a funky mood there's a good chance nothing I do will cause it to improve. However if my goal shifts to that of enjoying her, who is now responsible for my success? I am! She can be in a foul mood, but whether I enjoy her is now my responsibility. Once I made my goal that of enjoying her instead of pleasing her, everything changed. Instead of feeling like a failure when she was short, I was now master of my own destiny; I controlled whether I chose to enjoy her. Even better, the more I enjoyed her the more she looked forward to being with me. She could sense I was excited to see her and interested in her. It's natural to feel what irritates, but we have to be intentional to find what we appreciate. I read a quote the other day I found quite interesting: "what we appreciate, appreciates." After infidelity, if we want to build an extraordinary marriage, shifting the lens through which we see one another is imperative. The pain of betrayal causes the hurt spouse to be keenly aware of every flaw exhibited by their mate. The guilt of the betrayal certainly tempts the unfaithful spouse to focus on their mate's flaws as a way to justify their failure. Choosing to enjoy our mate and focusing on what we appreciate is imperative if we want to move from our ruts and back into our grooves. Pitfall #2 of Monogamy: Following Old Scripts The second pitfall of monogamy is the ridged scripts we create when we first marry. If I've heard it once I've heard it a thousand times, "I could express myself in the affair," or "we were able to talk in ways I've never been able to in my marriage." Why is that? It's because marriages typically operate off scripts created by newlyweds in their twenties which don't allow for new forms of expression as they mature. If a couple is stuck in a sex role script created by two twenty year olds, why wouldn't the freedom afforded by an extramarital affair provide for a new and previously suppressed form of expression? What's tragic is the marriage could have also provided a safe haven for self-expression if only they had known how to break free from old scripts and felt the freedom to express themselves in the marriage. Lest someone thinks I'm condoning affairs, I am not; but I do think it's tragic when marriages become rigorously monotonous. It doesn't have to be. Pitfall #3 of Monogamy: Just Being Close Isn't Going To Cut It Couples often settle for closeness and safety instead of intimacy. Intimacy is about a willingness to fully know another and a willingness to let them know you, not only who you are, but what you're thinking and doing. Part of what makes emotional and physical affairs so appealing is intimacy. Almost anybody can be intimate in an affair, but can they do it in a marriage? That takes hutzpah. In the beginning of a relationship there's always a fresh newness of life as we share our heart and soul with another and find they still love and accept us in spite of our flaws. I know that's part of what I enjoyed in the initial stages of my relationship with Stephanie, and it's also part of what I enjoyed as I began my affair. Intimacy in my marriage had long since gone missing, but why? Once married, intimacy isn't typically validated as it had once been in the beginning. In marriage, intimacy typically creates short term instability rather than closeness. If I share something I've done that I'm sure my mate won't agree with, instead of validation I may get condemnation. If I share my wants and preferences about our sexual relationship and my mate isn't interested in the same things, it may well create instability. What if what I find erotic and how I want to express myself sexually is different from my mate? Will they join me or reject me because I'm different than them? To avoid instability we settle for closeness, which is a pseudo-intimacy. Instability is minimized, but stability comes at the cost of passion. We pretend our wants are the same as our mate's in an attempt to avoid conflict, but in the process it often feels we've lost our soul. We have the security and safety we thought we wanted, but it leads to monotonous monogamy. We're not victims however, my passion is my responsibility not my mates, and choosing an emotional affair to address unmet needs is certainly easier in the short run, but it never helps us mature. Anyone can do intimacy in a romantic relationship, but can they learn to do it in a long-term committed relationship? In the emotional affair intrigue and mystery are abundant, but do you know how to keep intrigue and mystery alive in a marriage? The paradigm of closeness and security require us to truncate our mate, making assumptions about their motives and thoughts to fit how we choose to see them. To admit that maybe we don't fully know them opens us up to a world of discovery and unpredictability. While that may be exciting for those in the beginning stages of a relationship or in an affair, it's both challenging and wonderfully rewarding for those in a marriage. Pitfall #4 of Monogamy: Individual Sovereignty is an Aphrodisiac Passion and eroticism require distance, not sameness. The security generated by closeness can cause our mate to feel more like a sibling rather than a lover. Eroticism is about the ongoing expression of desire for our mate. It requires individual sovereignty where I take responsibility for my own desire and arousal, not abdicating my responsibility by placing that burden on my mate. It's refusing to believe I know my mate and instead choosing to see them as a deep mystery that I could spend 100 years trying to uncover only to still be surprised. It's not my mate that has to change, for passion to occur. I have to change how I see my mate and be honest with myself about who I am and who I am not. Maintaining passion also requires the courage to accept the "shadow of the third." How quickly we forget the gift given by our mate when they choose to spend their life with us. There is no shortage of people who would love to be with them, but they choose us. Devaluing our mate, by failing to remember there are others who would certainly love to be with them but for some strange reason they continue to be faithful to us, robs us of a true appreciation of their love. An appreciation for the shadow of the third reminds us of the value of our mate's ongoing commitment. We don't have to settle for this discouraging and hopeless monotonous monogamy. There are better ways, but they take effort and expert strategy. As I said earlier, bad marriages don't cause affairs, bad choices do. In fairness, that's not to say there aren't factors which make our marriages vulnerable. Why would you want to live in a lifeless marriage when there's a wonderful alternative without embarrassment or shame? I'd like to encourage you to consider the possibility that maybe what you're seeing and experiencing isn't all there is to the restoration process? Maybe what you both need is a paradigm shift? Maybe you're not as messed up as you think? If that's you, please consider enrolling in our EMS Online course for couples. It just might be the vehicle which leads to awareness and restoration. General help just isn't the full answer my friends. Finding a safe place which provides an infidelity-specific protocol is key for you and your partner's healing. I hope you'll consider getting the help you need today.Sections: NewsletterFounder's LaptopFree ResourcesHot Off the PressRL_Category: Types of AffairsWhy Marriages FailRL_Media Type: Text
