When Someone Believes They Need An Affair

BY JOYCE AND BARRY VISSELL

From the "The Need for Affairs" article on the Vissells' website, The Shared Heart Foundation, Reprinted with permission.

What does casual sex say about our culture and about our need to justify a betrayal of a promise?

"I can't get all my sexual needs met just by my wife. I need to be able to relate with other women. Outside sexual relationships bring spark and joy into my life, which I can then bring back to my wife."

Barry and I heard these comments at a recent counseling session. As the man spoke, we noticed his wife hung her head. When we asked her how she was feeling, she replied that she loved her husband very much and didn't want to stand in the way of his happiness. She assumed she needed to be more open and accepting of her husband's needs. Her body language and the hesitancy in her voice, however, was evidence to her insecurity in the relationship. She was trying to open to her husband's stated needs for sex outside the marriage in an attempt to keep the marriage together. His needs had become the priority. Her own feelings of insecurity, doubt and fear were pushed into the background. She assumed these feeling were blocking her husband's growth and expansion.

We encouraged her to share her feelings, stressing how all her feelings were important. Hesitantly, she began to express her feelings of insecurity in relation to her husband's behavior. This made him uncomfortable, so he again told her that she simply couldn't meet all of his sexual needs.

Over the years, this type of scene has played out from time to time in our counseling or workshops. Sometimes it is the woman feeling too confined by the relationship and wanting outside sexual expression, sometimes it is the man. We have seen the same thing in same-gender relationships. The common denominator is the insecure feeling of the partner who does not want outside involvement. As long as one partner feels insecure, that relationship cannot thrive.

When there is trust, love and a quality of helping one another to feel valuable and special, then the relationship can soar to the highest heights. In this type of relationship, the thought of needing an outside affair to bring more spark is ridiculous. People only feel the need to have outside sexual affairs when they are not giving enough of themselves to their partner. People will do this when they are afraid of commitment, vulnerability or dependency. The need for an outside affair is a cover-up for these inside fears. The man's comment of "you cannot meet all my sexual needs," can be translated as, "I don't want to look at my fears and so I cannot give all of myself to you or to me." Each of us wants to feel special and valuable in a relationship. As two people are willing to look at their own inner fears, to share them openly with one another, they will create deeper trust and love. Then there will be no need for outside affairs.

© Copyright The Shared Heart Foundation. Reprinted with permission.

What Does Casual Sex Say About Our Culture?

BY JUDITH SHERVEN, PH.D., AND JAMES SNIECHOWSKI, PH.D., from The New Intimacy Newsletter

Dear Judith and Jim,

When a man approaches a woman with wanting to be sexual friends, does he think poorly of himself or the woman?

Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

We chose your question because it gives us the chance to talk about the inordinate power sex has in our culture.

In our culture, sex is very probably the most abused aspect of human existence.

On the one hand we see it everywhere, and usually in distorted forms. On the other we are told that sex is the devil's snare, and can only lead to perdition if we are not extremely careful.

Sex is used as an advertising/sales tool and, because we, as a culture, worship money as though it were a god, that abuse of sex for commercial purposes is tolerated because it yields the golden bottom line.

Yet when sex is used directly to make money, as in prostitution, we relegate it and those who practice sex-for-money exchanges to the outcast regions of who and what we like to think we are, and pity, persecute, or prosecute them.

In romance, sex is supposed to be the ultimate experience and we assume that just because we are driven by and to sex we will know what to do to make a sexual encounter that ultimate experience. Then we fall short of the hype we've believed about what to expect and sex takes the rap.

Currently, the clerical underbelly of the abuse of sex is slithering into the light via the abuse scandals that are rocking the Catholic Church. Celibacy, the denunciation of sex as a supposed source of transcendence, is being sanctified again by some and vilified by others, and sex is left in the shuffle, instead of being integrated into a respectful and humility-based acceptance of how the Creator created this experience of life.

And finally, you ask "When a man approaches a woman with wanting to be sexual friends, does he think poorly of himself or the woman?" Why would that even come to mind? Why would a desire for a sexual relationship reduce someone's self-esteem?

We agree that purely sexual encounters that extend over a period of time most often end up in pain. Because there is a profound exchange that occurs between lovers even if they've been together only once. And yes, that power is barely understood by most if understood at all. But that is not a fault of sex but of the fact that we resist an honest, openhearted, sincere and spirit-based discussion that would enlighten people and prepare them for what they are getting into when they agree to have sex with one another. Sex is not a plaything, but it also not a monster. It is a primeval force that can lead to the creation of the most precious outcome, another human being. In that way, sex is a glimpse we get to have onto the awesome grandeur and potential of what it means to be the Creator.

Judith and Jim

© Copyright, May 31, 2002, Reprinted with permission