The Fallacy of Not Hurting Anyone With an Affair

How often do we see requests for friendship, or for lovers, in various advertisements, with the added desire that 'no one should get hurt'. This mainly applies to men seeking temporary solace from their negative home situations who either lack the courage to address their problems and face the issues squarely, or wish to have their cake and eat it. In their eyes, they are free to do what they can to remedy their situation "as long as no one gets hurt".

Often, people seek eternal liaisons with the misplaced belief that breaking up the union would harm everyone, except themself, it seems, and they have to protect that by pleasing themself instead. After all, they are the only ones who benefit from such a situation. But ignoring problems at home, which is the most important part of our lives, only makes the quality of our existence much worse. The answer to our problems is never outside. We merely take our needs elsewhere instead of seeing how it could be addressed internally through discussion, compromise and change.

The main problem with this approach is that, the minute the affair begins, the hurt is already there through the absence of trust and the deliberate betrayal of the other party. The lovers might not ever be found out, but the feelings we have for another do affect what is going on at home for that particular time. We either become more detached from our partners, less appreciative and less caring, or we become more affectionate to compensate for our outside activities. As soon as this new attention stops, there are also likely to be changes inside the home, and often for the worse, so that we continue to seek outside gratification to compensate, or the relationship deteriorates altogether.

Worse still, relationships seldom recover from external affairs which are discovered because trust is essentially destroyed. This leads to insecurity, resentment and continuous feelings of being unappealing and rejected by the offended party, along with a lot of guilt and negative feelings by the offender. The couple will limp along with the open secret between them, especially where one party is passive and accepts the situation, with or without conditions. But the offender will seldom change, unless he/she stands to lose a lot. This guarantees a repetition along with a gradual decline in the quality of the interaction and the feelings between them.

Once someone embarks on an affair, everyone gets hurt, even if it is not found out, because the quality of both the relationship and the feelings of the parties involved is affected, usually negatively. It keeps the party at home feeling neglected and unwanted, the one in the affair feeling guilty and the external party either feeling used in the end or with raised expectations of something more. Worse still, it never resolves the real issues and, if anything, is most likely to lead to the relationship disintegrating.

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