Insight

The following is an excerpt from "The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity" and reprinted by permission of Scott Haltzman, MD and Johns Hopkins University Press

?How frequent are affairs? It depends on how you define affairs, who you ask, and how they interpret the numbers. Among experts, there is no consensus on this issue. One of the most widely acknowledged statistics is this: about 1.5 percent of people will have an affair for each year of marriage. Not so bad, you might think. But that’s only per year. In other words, after ten years the rates go up to 15 percent, and after twenty years, 30 percent of married people have had an affair.

Expressing your love to your spouse is very important if you want to have a happy marriage. Being in love has its peaks and valleys. More often than not, even in the valley love still resides. Learning how to do this—among the mixed messages, badlands and even betrayal—is where expressing your love can be a challenge. If you consider your spouse as your real "significant" other, go ahead and let the good times roll in your expression of love. The bottom line is you are not perfect and neither is your spouse, but they are "significant" to you… aren’t they?

"Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new." ~Ursula K. LeGuin

Almost anyone can fall in love; our biological imperative to mate kicks in opening our hearts and flooding our nervous system with the euphoric experience of idealized connection, but many loving acts coming toward us everyday are not received at all.

We question the intention of those loving us—whether it be our spouse, our family or the platonic relationships we share with friends. We refuse to believe we are worthy of love at all. I witness this every day—this unwillingness to be loved that permeates our culture like a virus.

"There is no other physical act at our disposal that carries the physical, emotional and spiritual benefits of making love, especially with someone you love." ~Unknown

No one really understands sex, but if you are lucky, you get to spend years coming to grips with your erotic self and learning how to share and enhance the pleasure it brings. A good way to approach the topic is to think of our sexuality as an emergent rather than objective reality. That means we are willing to come to understand our sexuality and its meaning moment by moment and re-inventing it anew each and every time we are sexual.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. ~ Dr. Seuss

Sexual desire issues are an integral part of long-term relationships. In the 26 years of my own marriage, I have visited all sides of the desire fence. Whether it was wanting intimacy more than my spouse, not feeling wanted enough by my him or not wanting him or intimacy at all, each machination was painful and created ripples of injury throughout our entire marriage. The potential for rejection got to be so painful that not asking at all became the discomfort zone we lived in. At the time, I didn’t understand all the meaning I attributed to our desire issues; I only knew the shame and dwindling self-worth that felt suffocating each time we broached the topic.

The quality of your thoughts, especially concerning the people you love, creates the ground that allows for the growth in all of your relationships. Many people are unaware of the effects of their own thoughts or the powerfully destructive effect that negative thinking has on our relationships. Whether from unexamined ideas from our family of origin or unhealthy influences in popular culture, negative thinking and its projections limit the possibility of fully experiencing love in our relationships.

"It is precisely because our present life is so inseparably linked with desire that we must make use of desire's tremendous energy if we wish to transform our life into something transcendental."
~ Introduction to Tantra

Having regular orgasms will extend your life and provide the basis for a lasting relationship. We know that people who enjoy a regular, satisfying sex life (ie. regular orgasms) are less stressed, less depressed and generally more well physically, mentally and emotionally.