Simon’s Story

Growing up in a family steeped in tradition, Simon always knew he wanted to get married and raise a family. Just after graduating from college at the age of 23, he thought he had found the perfect partner: Julie, a fellow Catholic whom he had met at a church retreat. As far as Simon could tell, they had an ideal relationship, and after a couple of years together, the pair got married, with plans of raising a family together. 

Within a few months, however, Simon discovered that his bride was unfaithful, using Craigslist to meet up with other men while he was at work or at band rehearsal. Heartbroken, Simon put an end to their young marriage, divorcing less than a year after the wedding. It’s a story that has become more common in couples of all backgrounds and one that is keeping relationship experts busy.

Newlywed Cheating Statistics

• According to a 2005 British survey, about one in seven newlyweds will cheat on a spouse within one year of tying the knot.
• Sixty percent of cheaters have been in a relationship for at least five years.
• About 20 percent of newlywed men and 15 percent of women will cheat on their spouse in the first year of marriage.

Why Newlywed Cheating Occurs

It’s easy to see that newlywed infidelity is on the rise, but the reasons are varied and a little more complicated.

A Continuation of Infidelity

In some cases, the unfaithful bride or groom wasn’t faithful, to begin with. They simply continue their activities after getting married. Many times the unfaithful partner tries to change – perhaps believing that marriage is going to “fix” them – going months or more after getting married without pursuing anyone, but eventually falling back to old habits. Other times, the husband or wife never had any intention of remaining faithful after marriage.

Why marry then? As relationship experts point out, people get married for a number of reasons, some of which may not necessarily match with their partner’s ideals. Convenience, companionship, emotional or financial security, and social or religious pressure are all factors that can push even an unfaithful boyfriend or girlfriend into a supposedly faithful marriage.

Temptation of Online Culture

The rise of the Internet has been called out as a major contributing factor to cheating, both in married and unmarried couples. Numerous opportunities present themselves in the virtual world that could drive new husbands or wives to cheat, even if they weren’t seriously considering cheating on their spouse at first:

• Anonymity: The anonymous online world can make newlywed cheating both tempting to start and difficult to detect.
• E-flirting: Ranging from cute compliments to steamy online conversations, e-flirting is also on the rise, including flirting with past lovers, and is helped along by social media outlets such as Facebook.
• The grey area: A full-blown physical affair can easily start as what the partner views as a “harmless” habit that spirals out of control. Participating in chatrooms, posting self-videos and pictures, and similar online conduct is easy to justify as “not cheating” at first but can nonetheless cause severe emotional strain in a newlywed couple.

Escape from Responsibilities as Husband or Wife

Many newlyweds, especially those who are young or inexperienced, find themselves in a near panic after the knot is tied. Marriage is, after all, a huge responsibility, and the change can be quite a shock to some. 

All of a sudden, they are expected to fulfill a new role in life, as a dedicated wife or husband, and perhaps later as a mother or father. For some, marriage can suddenly seem daunting and confining, not the fairy tale that they may have thought or been told. Feeling trapped, new husbands or wives might stray early on to get a sense of that “freedom” that they feel they’ve lost.

No matter the reason, newlywed cheating is a rising trend that has relationship experts advising all couples to become more aware of. For some newlywed couples, cheating is a massive challenge they find can be overcome, but for others, it causes a rift that leads to an early divorce. Either way, the consequences of newlywed infidelity are very real.

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What Is Sex Addiction?

Sexual addiction is believed to be a manifestation of a person’s deep emotional problems, especially low self-esteem or the lack of an ability to form and keep close personal relationships. It is linked to an internal level, root cause, and sexual acts become a way of coping with or escaping emotional pain – similar to drug and alcohol addictions.

If someone has committed infidelity has a sexual addiction, they may be unable to stop themselves from acting on compulsive thoughts about sex. The person may also experience obsessive thoughts about sex at such a level as to harm their careers, social lives, and health.

A growing body of research suggests some elements of sexual addiction exist at the level of the brain’s reward system, carrying a biological component. As the sex addiction progresses, the person needs more intense or bizarre sexual encounters or materials to get the same “rush.” Many people struggling with sexual addiction say their behaviors bring about a sense of “numbing out.”

Signs

Sexual addiction connected to infidelity can manifest as multiple sexual partners, an addiction to porn, or excessive strip club use. Others may demonstrate sexual addiction through obsessive cybersex activity or sexting. In each case, acting out sexual impulses becomes all-controlling and consumes a great deal of time. Although the person knows the consequences for their marriage and family, they are unable to control the impulses.

There is also a fear and secrecy element to sexual addiction and infidelity. The person with sexual addiction will often feel strong levels of fear and shame following the acting out of their impulses, which can lead to depression and a preoccupation with keeping their actions secret.

Following expert beliefs about sexual addiction, no intimate relationships or bonds are formed with the person(s) the addict is engaging in sex with; rather, they become like objects to escape negative emotions or get a “high.” 

They may also represent an escape from the turmoil the addict feels about not being able to feel an intimate bond with their spouse.

The distorted thought patterns involved in sexual addiction and infidelity are another symptom. The person with the sexual addiction views each extra-marital sexual encounter through the lens of compulsive urges, leading to rationalization or entitlement. 

Through multiple sexual encounters or activities, they may live a fantasy life completely separate from their marriage, family, and workplace. People with sexual addictions may also show co-addictions, such as gambling, drugs, or alcohol.

Treatment

Treatment for sexual addiction within marriage requires the participation of both partners in a professional setting. Due to the heavy emotional burden sexual addiction places on a spouse, many experts believe success is unattainable without dual participation.

Like other addictions, the inability to control the obsessive thoughts and urges about sex can be relieved through professional guidance, and root causes of the behaviors can be identified. Treatment can include individual and couples’ counseling, as well as the support of national self-help groups for sexual addiction.

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Affair Or One-Night Stand?

This is a big and essential distinction to make when considering coming clean. If you are having an ongoing affair, there are a thousand ways that your spouse could find out. 

Being found out is clearly worse than confessing. When you are found out, your spouse will always wonder if you stopped the affair and focused on your marriage because you wanted to or because you were caught. A one-night stand is a little bit more of a gray area. Deciding whether to confess to it is a very personal decision with pros and cons for both options.

Confessing May Save Your Marriage

Researchers have determined that confessing to your indiscretion, regardless of whether it was a one-time thing or a long-term affair, is the best thing you can do to rebuild and save your marriage. 

Conducted by professors from the University of Washington and UCLA, the study included over 100 married couples, all of which participated in relationship counseling of various types. The researchers surveyed and interviewed the couples over five years to assess their satisfaction levels with their marriages and the stability of their relationships.

The researchers took a close and careful look at the couples who experienced infidelity during the five years. In some cases, it was only one spouse who had been unfaithful; for other couples, both had cheated. Seventy-four percent of these couples included one or more partners who admitted to the infidelity. 

The other 26 percent kept a secret from a spouse but were found out by the researchers during questioning. After the five-year study period, 80 percent of the couples that held the secret of infidelity ended up divorced, while only 43 percent of those who confessed ended in a split. 

The couples who had experienced a confession of infidelity had the same levels of stability and satisfaction at the end of the study as those who had never had a cheating incident.

The results indicate that confessing makes a difference to the future of the marriage. An important factor to note is that all of the couples were participating in counseling. The couples making the admission that were able to stay together benefited from working with a therapist. They used the gains made during counseling to work through the problem and come out together on the other side.

Confessing to an indiscretion is always a personal choice that you have to make based on what you feel is suitable for you and your relationship. But what the study should make clear to you is that cheating does not have to mean the end of your marriage. If you want to restore trust, rebuild your relationship and have a future with your spouse, confessing may be the best thing you can do. Follow that confession with marriage counseling, and you could be on the path to an even stronger bond with your spouse.

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The reason the gap may only appear to be closing is that in the past, women may have been less likely to answer researcher’s questions about infidelity honestly. Social stigmas for women surrounding promiscuity and relationship configurations which necessitated a woman’s reliance on a man, rather than the reverse, meant women had a much greater need to keep silent in such matters.

Technological Advancements in Everything and in Cheating

The workplace is understood to be a hotbed for possible infidelity because of a principle understanding in social psychology: anticipation builds liking. Whenever we run into someone who piques our interest, and we think we stand a chance of running into them again, excitement builds. Interest. We anticipate running into this person again.

And it’s that excitement and anticipation that keeps us interested, likely even more than the individual themselves. Work offers the perfect opportunity for these elements of excitement and anticipation-I wonder if I’ll see that cute new project manager today?-all against the backdrop of boredom and stress, and completely out of the awareness of our spouse, someone who likely offers little or no excitement.

But there is a new landscape for hitting this button of excited anticipation, sometimes over and over again in the same afternoon, and that is the world of social media. Who hasn’t opened a Facebook message from an old high school flame, a questionably flirtatious direct message from a stranger on Twitter, a text (or “sext”) message from someone who isn’t one’s committed partner, or any of the other dozens of formats for communication in the virtual world? Who hasn’t sent such a communication and then wondered whether it wasn’t murky territory?

The New Statistics

Today, 57% of men admit to committing infidelity in any relationship, while 54% of women now admit to the same. Infidelity statistics for women before the 1990s were between 10-15%. It is unlikely, although possible, that rates of infidelity in women have increased this much a 20 year period. What is more likely is that women are becoming more honest about their infidelity as societal stigmas loosen, and that infidelity is a greater possibility for women (as well as for men) with social media, cell phones, and the world of texting.

Reasons for Cheating

It was once believed that men cheated whether or not they were happy in their relationships and whether or not they were sexually satisfied with their wives, but that women only cheated if they were miserable in their marriages and if they had fallen desperately or dispassionately out of love. The new research into infidelity has determined that differences between infidelity in men and women are not so black and white, however. Women also cheat in happy relationships and on partners whom they love.

The reasons why may be answered by evolutionary psychologists who explain that it isn’t only men who have been wired by nature to ensure the biological diversity of the species. Research into species that mate monogamously for life, like the swan or wolf, reveal that although pair bonds are formed and the young raised together, those young are not always the result of the bonded pair. Likely to ensure diversity and the health of the species, the female might mate with another male at some point during the pair’s union. Even so, the pair remains together.

Of course, there are other reasons-psychological, emotional, and sexual-why both women and men cheat, though men report cheating more frequently for reasons which are sexual in nature, while women report cheating more frequently for reasons which are emotional in nature. This should not lead one to the conclusion that women do not cheat for sexual reasons or that men do not cheat for emotional ones. Such thinking is as old as the previous statistics which we recognize now to fall drastically short of the evidence.

Whatever one’s reasons for cheating, opportunities are more ample for both committing and for hiding affairs. What this will mean for already high divorce rates is yet to be seen. While we continue to place a high social value on marriage in America-spending billions annually on the industry created around it and upholding or erecting laws to “protect it”-paradoxically, we continue to pay into many other mechanisms meant to erode it. Marriage may not be at question, but the centrality of monogamy may be. That’s another question for the experts.

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#1 Contact Is Easier.

It used to take courage to ask someone out. The pursuer would write notes or practice in the mirror before knocking on the door of their beloved; the pursued would sit nervously by the phone for the long-awaited request for a date. Both had to master key social skills and learn the basics of communication.

Social media websites make getting dates (and break-ups) extremely simple. This can have a number of positive and negative side effects. Because social media sites take away the immediacy of person-to-person contact, men and women are more likely to initiate contact than they once were. Distance, a busy schedule and lack of access to potential partners are no longer barriers to dating.

On the negative side, for those looking for a committed, long-term relationship, social media may be making it too easy to meet people. Easy accessibility to an enormous pool of potential partners may be contributing to serial dating (juggling multiple relationships at one time), promiscuity and infidelity.

Even though we’re able to contact a long list of people, social media sites may not be enabling the deep, long-lasting companionship that many hope to find. Rather than investing in one or two serious relationships, people may find themselves only superficially engaged in a series of short-term interactions.

#2 In-Person Meetings Occur with Virtual Strangers.

You’re able to learn tons of things about people through their social media profiles and websites before ever meeting them. Tweets, story posts on Instagram can provide an excellent preview of who you are potentially meeting with. 

But even with extensive detective work, the truth is you never really know what you’re going to get. While social networking sites attract millions of smart, well-adjusted people, there are just as many people lying about who they are, what they do and how they look. Some are outright dangerous. The truth is you never know which of these individuals will show up looking to take you on a date.

#3 Private Life Is More Public.

Depending on your profiles’ setting and privacy, updates and posts may allow the entire social media network see changes taking place in real time. 

The complications continue when a relationship ends. Is it cold-hearted to change your status to single right away? What if you’ve been in a committed, long-term relationship with someone and you suddenly see that they changed their status to single? Does that mean the relationship is over?

If you’re not meticulous about deleting records, social networking sites like Facebook make available all of the posts on your page since you first created your profile. This means people can look back at your history and see the start – and potentially embarrassing end – of past relationships. And you can do the same, making it difficult to move on from old flames that fizzled.

#4 Conversations May Be Scripted.

On your first night out your date yells at the waiter and can hardly form a sentence. What happened? He was so polite and eloquent online.

Online we can choose to present ourselves not as who we are but as who we want to be. 

Your prospective date may be hiding behind an alternate persona, or you may have created a false image of who you think the person is based on a few comments they made. Our best allies when looking for a partner – instincts and common sense – can become cloudy behind a computer screen.

#5 Interpretation Is Difficult.

As a relatively new medium for dating, there is a lot of unchartered territory on social media sites. Instead of attempting to read someone’s body language, vocal tone and other social cues, we get on our Facebook pages looking for signals whether someone is interested or not.

If she posts on your wall five times in one day, is it a red flag that she’s too needy or obsessive? He hasn’t updated his page since your blow-out fight; does that mean he’s hiding his posts from you? Why is she untagging herself from all of the pictures of you as a couple?

Social media can be rife with misunderstandings and mixed messages for partners who are trying to interpret each other’s cues from behind a computer screen. People may find themselves obsessively checking these sites and stalking their partners or potential partners because it is so easy to do.

An Obstacle to Healthy Intimacy

Dating sites have directly helped thousands of people find happiness and love – as many as 120,000 married couples in just one year, according to a 2008 study. Much less reported are the number of unhealthy “hook-ups” and mismatched – even dangerous – pairings that occur each year on social media sites.

While there is a place for social media in our lives, we have to recognize and guard against the challenges it presents. If we’re not careful, getting to know too many people too quickly can break down healthy personal boundaries and become an obstacle to genuine intimacy.

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Unfortunately, your life is now entangled with another person’s, and sometimes the process of breaking things off is not as easy and as clean as you expected. An affair that meant nothing to you may have meant quite a lot to the other person involved. This person also has knowledge about you that you may be desperate to keep from other people, and your erstwhile lover may decide to use that knowledge against you for some kind of personal gain.

Sexual, Work-Related And Emotional Blackmail

The classic blackmail model involves one person with dangerous information bleeding large sums of money out of the person who wants to keep that information secret. The kind of “blackmail” that can result from the end of an affair may not be quite so straightforward.

Some affair partners may use the threat of exposure in an effort to keep the affair going after the other partner is ready to end things. They may have become emotionally involved or they may just enjoy the sex, but either way they are prepared to reveal the affair if their lovers do not agree to keep seeing them.

Many affairs take place in the workplace, and in this environment a former lover may attempt to use his or her knowledge for career advancement or other advantages. While this does not directly drain an individual’s own financial resources, it can still be extremely stressful as well as potentially damaging to the blackmailed party’s own career prospects.

Perhaps the most common form of blackmail to follow the end of an affair is what might be called emotional blackmail. With this form of blackmail, a former lover may not make any particular demands for money, favors or sex. However, he or she may repeatedly threaten to reveal the affair for a variety of reasons, leaving the straying spouse in a permanent state of anxiety and suspense.

A former lover may claim to be plagued by feelings of guilt that continually prompt him to tell about the affair. In some cases these feelings of guilt may be genuine, or they may simply be the excuse offered by people who enjoy the sense of power that their secret knowledge gives them. Some may even threaten exposure out of pure anger over the way an affair ended and a desire for revenge.

Celebrity Blackmail

When an extramarital affair turns into blackmail is common by itself, but even more so when it involves celebrities. Seeing large or repeated demands for money may be relatively uncommon, but it is also not an unheard-of phenomenon. In 2009, late-night host David Letterman became perhaps the most famous apparent victim of infidelity-related blackmail when he revealed that a man had demanded $2 million to keep him from publishing a screenplay and book detailing Letterman’s affairs with female employees.

Various other celebrities of varying levels of fame, such as television evangelist Marcus Lamb, have revealed attempts to blackmail them for infidelity. While the rich and famous may be particularly at risk for this kind of blackmail, having both money and reputations to protect, “regular” folks are certainly not immune.

Beware ‘No-Strings-Attached’ Affairs Via The Internet

There is growing anecdotal evidence that websites such as AshleyMadison.com, which are designed to connect married people looking to have affairs, have their share of petty criminals looking for more than just no-stings-attached sex. These folks are also searching for ways to make money by collecting incriminating evidence about people’s marital indiscretions and using it for blackmail.

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