Can your marriage survive an
affair? The answer to that may depend on
how healthy your marriage was to start, and whether or not you and your spouse
are willing to undergo post-affair counseling.
Many marital counselors say it is possible
to repair a relationship after infidelity, but only if both parties are willing
to work hard and honestly acknowledge shortcomings in the relationship and in
themselves.
Some 20% of men and 14% of women
who have ever been married have had extramarital sex, according to federally
sponsored research conducted since 1972 by the social-science research
organization NORC at the University of Chicago. (Reliable statistics about
infidelity are scarce, largely because many people won't own up to an affair.)
How many marriages survive
infidelity? Peggy Vaughan, a San Diego researcher who runs the website
Dearpeggy.com, recently surveyed 1,083 people and found 76% of those whose
spouses had affairs were still married and living with the spouse. Other estimates
from a different sampling of marriage therapists range from 30% to 80%.
Ultimately, whether a marriage
survives an affair depends on how healthy the marriage was to begin with, how
long the affair lasted and the manner in which it was discovered.
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