Wordscapes® (David Turner, Registered Trademark Owner) Types of Affairs

Love Affairs, Sex Affairs & Cyber Affairs

Self-esteem needs are the reasons given for man affairs. Self-esteem needs are met through knowing, understanding and acceptance. Self-esteem is enhanced through talking intimately about feelings, thoughts and needs. When we inquire warmly and affirm each other, we meet one another's self-esteem needs.

There are several types of affairs - and each has different motives, different behaviors, different feelings and different consequences.

The two main categories of affairs are love (emotional) affairs and sex (physical) affairs. They are divided into these categories to help you distinguish between them, develop a better understanding of how and why they happen and know what to do if they do happen.

Love Affairs

An emotionally and sexually intimate bond between a married person and someone who is not his or her spouse.

Sex Affair

A liaison between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse that involves genital contact, with little on no emotional involvement.

The feelings evoked by an affair allow diagnosis of its type. The needs met by an affair indicate its motivation, its probable duration and the degree of threat it presents to the marriage. This knowledge allows couples to relate to one another in ways that meet one another's needs and either prevent or undermine an affair.

Cyber Affair

A cyber affair is an intimate or sexually explicit communication between a married person and someone other than their spouse that takes place on the computer over the internet. This communication requires both parties subscribe to an on-line Internet service. About 25 million people access the Internet, so the chances of meeting someone over the Net are very high. You simply select the category of Chat Room you would like to visit. The chat room categories range from "over 40" to "married and flirting" to "naked on the keyboard."

Women find that after a little conversation that is flirtation but seems benign, they are confronted with increasingly sexual questions and comments. Men may ask a woman for a picture or at least her profile. Men usually demand a phone number with the hope that they can talk women into a real-life affair. By far the majority of cyber affairs are sexually graphic and often crude.

Men are less shy about exploring and expressing their feelings while on-line than in person. While wives may find husbands reluctant to talk about emotions to them, these same men will, in a cyber affair, dislodge their inhibitions and write about their fleeting fantasies and impassioned emotions.

Women can become more sexually adventurous and explicit on-line than they would be face to face. For many women it is an opportunity to pretend to be different than they are.

Pretending is a major them in cyber affairs. Most men say they are professionals - doctors, lawyers or accountants - and of course they all work out at the gym every day. And, nearly universally, they explain that if their wives liked sex, they wouldn't be sex shopping on the Internet.

The dangers are the same as the opportunities. The desire to explore and express feelings and to be known as you would lie to be is engaging but it is easy to begin to believe the fantasy.

Needs Met by An Affair

		»	Being loved
		»	Being needed
		»	Being understood
		»	Enjoyable risk
		»	Freedom/independence
		»	Friendship
		»	Fun
		»	Intellectual stimulation
		»	Loving
		»	Sexual fulfillment