Updated September 19, 2014.
Everyone hears it: Couples grow bored of each other over time. In many ways, it is insinuated that cheating is bound to happen at some point or another in your lifetime if you are married or together with your partner for the long haul. This article shares the perspective on cheating of a psychologist at the forefront of research in the areas of love and relationships, Dr. Sue Johnson, who has science to back up her claims.
One expert answers the question: Is cheating inevitable?
Johnson has been studying and working with couples for decades. She developed a rigorously researched form of couples therapy known as Emotionally Focused Therapy that has been demonstrated to have a 90% rate of improvement among couples. She has devoted her career to understanding what makes love work, and is at the forefront of a revolutionary new way of understanding love and relationships. Her book Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships explains more about what love is all about.
She answers this question as to whether cheating is bound to happen with a point blank "no," and indicates, in her own words, that "all the pessimism about how impossible monogamy is, is just that, it's pessimism."
The truth about marriage and sex
Researchers have found that couples in happy, long-term marriages have more satisfying and better sex than their single counterparts. The idea that one has better and more impassioned sex with a stranger or someone less known than one's partner is a myth.
Linda Waite, a sociologist out of the University of Chicago, has synthesized a great deal of research on marriage and has found its many benefits, one of which has to do with sex. She offers four clear benefits of marriage for a better sex life:
Proximity - Sex is just that much more convenient when you are already sharing a bed with someone.
A long-term contract - Couples are with each other for the long haul, which provides more incentive to please each other and get sex right.
Exclusivity - Without other outlets, there is also more incentive to invest in one's sex life.
Emotional bonding - Perhaps most importantly, marriage is a relationship built, ideally, upon a strong emotional bond. Johnson likens sex without emotion as dancing without music: Flat and one-dimensional. The stronger a couple's emotional bond, the better the sex.
Why is there so much cheating, then?
While cheating is definitely not inevitable, it is no secret that it happens. It is clear that despite all of the research on love and how to make marriage work, couples still struggle, with many winding up divorced. While the reasons behind cheating vary for different people, affairs frequently have to do with a need for connection.
When connection breaks down between two partners, their relationship enters a trouble zone. People may dismiss or be completely unaware of their needs for emotional connection. We actually hear a different tune from society about the glories of being independent, which is actually a far cry from what we really are: Interdependent at our best, with emotional needs. The problem of a missing emotional connection within a couple is therefore not often realized until it becomes severe, at times resulting in infidelity.
Until messages like Johnson's hit the mainstream about how to get love right, many couples may still struggle. Even so, cheating is definitely not a guarantee. Listen to Johnson herself about the myths of inevitable cheating by hearing her quick answer to this question.
Sources
Johnson, S., Hunsley, J., Greenberg, L. & Schindler, D. (1999). Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Status & challenges (A meta-analysis). Journal of Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 6,67-79.
Waite, L. J. & Gallagher, M. (2000). The case for marriage: Why married people are happier, healthier and better off financially. New York: Broadway Books.
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