Given the passion that launches so many affairs, it's a little surprising that so few grow into lasting relationships. Here's why they tend to end.
While we can think of cases where affairs have eventually turned into healthy marriages—Duke of Windsor who abdicated the British throne and Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous American architect, each who seemed to have finally found their soulmates—most of us mere mortals don't fare so well.
Look up the length of affairs on Google and apart from one-or-two-night stands, the consensus is that most run their course in six months to two years. Why? Here are some of the psychological underpinnings to affairs that sabotage their ability to become more than short or long exercises in acting out:Just as Romeo and Juliet were in part pushed together by being united against their feuding families, what often brings the affairing couple together is their shared unhappiness in their partners: This new person understands how I feel . And like Romeo and Juliet, the beginning of the relationship brings excitement—of getting to know and feeling appreciated by a new person, of sharing your story to an interested listener, the excitement of breaking out—of the boxed-in life—of breaking rules, the excitement of new flesh andBut eventually, all this fades—the talk of misery gets old or dies down, the breaking out turns into being broken out, the backstory is told, the flesh is no longer new. The relationship settles, and when it does, other aspects of each other's , unnoticed before, rise to the surface. What each finds is another variation of what they don't like in their partners.But not only do their shared misery and the excitement blind them to seeing each other more completely, so do their needs and frustrations with their partners. The new person is less a real person and more an 'un-person'—the seeming opposite of the partner. Where he was dramatic, this new person is steady; where she was steady, this person is spontaneous and fun-loving; where he was critical, this person is so approving and gracious. Yes, the new person may be like this, but these qualities are only and unnaturally amplified by their contrast to the partner. The complex self is reduced to a simpler, one-dimensional one.
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