Statistics show that between 20 to 75% of people have affairs within a marriage. Why that varies so widely is because a lot of people can’t decide what cheating constitutes. For some people it might be simply talking to another man or woman and then some people it will be intercourse.

So maybe we need to look at the timing of affairs i.e. when they happen to understand a little bit more about why people have affairs. So they tend to happen around deaths or soon after the birth of another child and it does tend to happen a lot around kind of midlife point. Now I think that really does give a hint about why do people have affairs because those times are real times of reflection so for example when you have the death of someone close you really begin to question what life’s all about and you might find a part of your life lacking. And having a child is a loss of role, it’s a massive change in relationship so again they might have been something that might have been forgotten about in the relationship when you’ve got a new priority you like looking after a child. All of these are times of real reflection and change and in this time people might find it there’s something lacking from their life and someone else might have come in the picture purely by chance and give them that sense of change and excitement – like a quick fix for something deeper in their life.

So the main two reasons for having an affair was because people wanted to improve their sex lives and the second reason was because people wanted to have greater emotional intimacy. But they don’t necessarily need to signify the end of a marriage. If you can talk through them and understand why it happened it’s been found that about 86% of people who spend time working through it and discussing it can actually continue on their marriage and many report that it actually helped improve their marriage. For this to happen there needs to be a couple of important steps.The perpetrator is a bit of a harsh term but the person who has done the cheating needs to read and take responsibility for hurting their spouses or partners feelings. Interestingly you don’t have to feel guilty about having had the affair because the affair  could be a sign that something was wrong. The important part is feeling guilty about hurting the other half. The person who’s being cheated on needs to build up their own self-esteem and think about what they want, how they can get their confidence back, so it might be through doing activities having space to re-discover themselves a little bit and I also need to resist that very tempting urge to hear sordid details about what happened and where.

If these steps can happen there’s no reason why you can’t learn from it and there’s no reason why you can’t have a better and stronger marriage.

We hope you found this useful.  For more divorce advice go here.

Transcript of Video

Dr Hung: Statistics show that between 20 to 75% of people will have affairs within a marriage. Why does that figure vary? So widely well that’s because a lot of people, for starters, can’t decide what, what cheating constitutes for some people that might be simply talking to another man or woman. And for some people it’ll be intercourse.

So maybe. We should need to look at timing of affairs when they happen to understand a little bit more about why people have affairs. So they tend to happen around deaths around soon after the birth of another child. And you know, it does happen a lot around kind of the midlife point. Now I think that that really does give a hint about why people have affairs because.

Times are real times of reflection. So for example, when. You have the death of someone close. You really begin to question, you know, what life’s all about? And you might find a part of your life lacking. Having a child is a loss of role. It’s a massive change in relationship. So again, there might have been something that might have been forgotten about in the relationship when you’ve got a new priority, like looking after a child, all of these are kind of times of real reflection and change.

And in these times people might find. There’s something lacking from their life and someone else might have come in the picture purely by, by chance and give them that sense of change excitement. It feels like a quick fix for, for something deeper in their life. So the main two reasons for having an affair was because people wanted to improve their sex lives.
And the second reason was because people. Wanted to have greater emotional intimacy. But they don’t necessarily need to signify the end of their marriage. If you can talk through them, affair, understand why it happened. It’s been found that about 86% of people who, who read, spend time working through it and discussing it can actually continue on in their marriage and many report that it actually helped improve their marriage.

For this to happen, there needs to be a couple of important step. The perpetrator it’s a bit of a harsh term, but the person who has done the cheating needs to really take responsibility for hurting the, their spouses or, or partners feelings. Interestingly, they don’t necessarily have to feel guilty about having had the affair because the affair could be a sign that something was wrong.
the kind of important part is feeling guilty about hurting the other half. The person who’s been cheated on needs to build up their own. Self-esteem think about what they want, how they can get their confidence back. So it might be through doing activities, having space to rediscover themselves a little bit.

And they also need to resist that very tempting urge to, to hear sorted details about what happened and where if these steps can happen, if you can learn from it, there’s no reason you can’t have a better and stronger marriage.