Tales From the Front by Cheryl Lavin

We recently heard from I Know I Know I Know, who's divorced and having an affair with a married man. They only see each other three times a year, but they text and email. She keeps him a secret because she knows the advice she'd get.

I told her there were many things wrong with an affair with a married man and she probably knew all of them. But maybe there was something positive about this particular one.

"Maybe you're actually helping his marriage by providing him with a safety valve. If he knows he can see you occasionally, and contact you frequently, he might be nicer to his wife and more committed to his marriage."

Today we hear from I Really Know ...

My husband had a similar affair — mostly emails and phone calls and a few times of meeting in person for sex. It went on for over four years. During it, he was usually angry, often unreasonably so, distant and unpredictable. I put his behavior down to the stress of his job.

I Know has convinced herself that her affair is justifiable because her married man "is so nice" he's got her hooked. Well, duh. Of course he's nice! She's a fantasy. She doesn't see him in his gross clothes, or smell his morning breath or farts, or hear his complaining about helping with the children, etc. She's available when he wants her around and doesn't bother him when he doesn't.

During his affair, my husband was unhappy. He used that as an excuse for his behavior. I wasn't happy, either, but I was committed to my marriage and never thought about having an affair. I'd bet my house that I Know's partner's wife is not happy.

Affairs happen because people don't have boundaries, need to bolster low self-esteem through others or feel a sense of entitlement, just to name a few very common reasons. An affair is 100 percent the choice of the person having it. No sane betrayed spouse ever gave his-her spouse permission to cheat. There's only room in a marriage for two.

The bottom line is that an affair never did a marriage any good. It makes a troubled marriage even more troubled, and it makes a good marriage — yes, affairs happen in good marriages, too — a troubled marriage.

I hope that I Know does what is best for everyone, herself included. Most of the time when an affair is discovered, the married man stays married. Only a very small percentage of affairs end in marriage for the affair partners, and of those, only a very small percentage don't end in divorce. Who knows how successful the remaining marriages are because, after all, how can someone who has married a cheater ever feel secure? "If he did it with you, he'll do it to you."

Today, my husband and I are happily married, but not because of his affair. We have had literally years of individual and marital therapy, and thousands of hours of talking his affair to death. But if his affair had continued much longer, I'm not sure we would still be married. I had about reached the end of my patience with him.

Cheryl Lavin may be reached at cheryllavin@aol.com. You can visit her blog at www.talesfromthefront.com. To find out more about Cheryl Lavin, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

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