Summary
I had an extra-marital affair, which I could never explain. I know that many people have an affair, but mine was hard to understand. I was not unhappy in my marriage. I wasn’t unfulfilled sexually. Jamie and I had a good relationship. We were well-matched in many ways and happy together.
Cole and Putnam (1992) note that “survivors rely heavily on ‘relatively immature coping strategies, which . . . increase the likelihood of acting impulsively when frustrated, depressed, or anxious by ( . . . engaging in misconduct such as substance abuse, sexual acting out, running away, and other self-destructive behaviors).’”i
i Cole, Pamela M., and Frank W. Putnam, “Effect of incest on self and social functioning: A developmental psychopathology perspective,” J. Consulting Clin. Psychol., 60(2), 174-184, 1992.
An Earlier Episode
I have an earlier example of sexual acting out, which may have been a prequel to the affair. Shortly after Maria’s birth, I enrolled in night school and signed up for a geology class. I found the geology instructor appealing and had a fleeting thought one night of trying to seduce him. I actually visited him in his office but had no intention of orchestrating a seduction, so nothing happened. That time I went home and told Jamie about it. We talked briefly and that was it – nothing was resolved; a big mistake.
Some Background Leading up to the Affair
I want to emphasize that I’ve never approved of extra-marital affairs. I never intended to have one, and I am still ashamed of it. It is the most hurtful thing that I have ever done, betraying my husband, my “knight in shining armor.”
About a year before the affair, our friends Vicki and Jack, with whom we did the babysitting exchange, went for a bicycle ride with Jamie and me. I had a baby seat on the back of my bike for Maria, and Jack had one for Sandy, their daughter. We rode for a while until we reached a small pond where we stopped to rest. I was pregnant with Jeffrey at the time, and I was warm from the exertion of riding and pulling Maria’s weight in addition to my own. “I want to jump in the pond to cool off,” I said. Jamie, the voice of reason, objected; while Jack encouraged me to do what felt good.
I listened to Jamie. He was right, of course. If I was wet as I rode back, I would get cold from the wind. But Jack’s statement stuck with me. He seemed to be saying to do what feels good. I internalized that as a statement about self-actualization, which refers to “the full development of one’s potential.”
It wasn’t until a year later, when Jeffrey was sick—coughing all day and night—that I started thinking about how I could escape the sound. It seemed to me that I was getting tired of my daily responsibilities, especially stressful ones, and I might have wanted some relief.
I was feeling both powerless and angry because Jamie and I had faithfully taken Jeffrey to doctors, and they seemed singularly unable to cure him. Daily we were giving him a prescribed medication that he hated, and it seemed useless. I found it extremely frustrating to have to listen to him cough while I could do nothing to help him.
The anger I felt and the fear about Jeffrey’s health inspired the activation of my lower brain regions, causing my primitive brain to simply overwhelm my thinking brain.
At the time, Jamie was doing laboratory experiments at Walter Reed, and he would often come home for dinner, then turn right around and go back to work. This was very hard on me. I would be alone with Jeffrey’s coughing at night then, after I had listened to it all day.
Jack Enters the Situation
I was so anxious about Jeffrey that, at night, I began calling our friend Jack, who was by this time, separated from his wife, Vicki. Our conversations went on for the better part of three months. Jamie was aware of these talks, but neither he nor I realized that what I really needed was for Jamie to stay home at night to support me while Jeffrey coughed. I never said that to Jamie, though, thus giving rise to the events that followed.
I don’t remember what Jack and I talked about, but I guess it was about psychology in general, but especially self-actualization, which fascinated me. Jack had a dream of becoming a psychiatrist, and I suspect that our conversations may have mirrored his view of himself as a doctor helping a patient. Before it ever occurred to me as a possibility, I was becoming emotionally involved with Jack. It started creeping into our relationship.
I had learned that Jeff liked the poem “The Ballad of Sam McGee,” so I copied it onto a bed sheet and sent it to him for his birthday. When Jack told his psychiatrist about the gift, the doctor told him it implied that I wanted to sleep with him. And Sue Blume would agree, as she notes that “. . . When [the survivor] feels attracted to another person, she may define the attraction as sexual.”ii
Events snowballed soon after. Jack came to the house one day, knowing that Jamie would be at work, and I started wondering if he had an interest in me too. Was Jack as guilty as I in orchestrating this affair? Was his visit a way of letting me know that he was available? I think Jack may have had his own agenda. It seemed to me that Jack had progressed from telling me to “jump in the pond” to suggesting that I “jump into his bed.”
I Take Matters into my Own Hands
Finally I felt impelled to take some kind of action. It appears that my lower, or emotional, brain made the unfortunate decision to pursue a sexual liaison with a male friend. Unfortunately my lower brain had no direct access to my deep-seated, and very real, objections to extra-marital sexual coupling that were stored in the thinking part of my brain.
Psychiatry Professors John Briere and Diana Elliot’s study provide some basis for my actions. They note that “ Indiscriminate sexual activity by some sexual abuse survivors may provide distraction and avoidance of distress . . .”iii
This is what I sought at the time, so I decided to act. A day or two after Mother’s Day, 1969, I went to Jack’s apartment and told him that I wanted to have sex with him. This was my lower or emotional brain speaking, and as a consequence, I never considered talking to Jack about using protection, nor did I ask him about his recent sexual history.
Jack decided that, if we were going to proceed, he should call Jamie first to get his approval. Knowing Jamie, I thought that he would simply say no, and that would be the end of it, but Jamie was so caught off guard that he was thunderstruck. He told Jack that we might as well go ahead with it. Jamie says now that he thought that I had given my heart to Jack, so he didn’t think that saying “no” would make much difference in the outcome. His thoughts were conditioned by his belief that I would never have extramarital sex with someone I did not fully love. However, Jamie was mistaken as this affair was, in essence, a non-romantic one.
Jamie’s behavior can be further explained by what was going on in his brain. When faced with a traumatic situation like this, the upper brain centers go “offline” or, in other words, the thinking part of the brain becomes paralyzed, unable to process information.iv Thus, when Jack made his call, Jamie was unable to deal adequately with his message, so he simply acquiesced to my desire to have sex. This was an unusual abandonment of his usual caretaker role; in essence he left me on my own.
Jamie told me later that, at that moment, he no longer knew who I was. For years he has struggled with trying to understand how I could sexually betray the one person who had loved and cared for me all these years, always wanting the best for me. And I coupled with a friend I clearly did not love, and with whom I ended the relationship almost immediately thereafter.
Consummating my desire with an affair
I wish that my thinking brain had been in control right then so that I could’ve thought about Jamie and what I was doing. I knew that he would be terribly hurt by my action. But it was unfortunately the powerful emotional brain in control because, with the thinking brain, I never would have chosen to hurt Jamie like that.
But I was on auto-pilot, and my compulsion had a momentum that propelled me, with Jack, into his bedroom. The sex was as satisfying as it can be between friends. I found it difficult to be lustful or passionate, though. In fact, for me, the act itself and the afterglow were colored by the fact that Jamie was aware of our coupling. Immediately after, the compulsion to have sex with Jack had completely evaporated.
Jack and I talked some afterward. Then I got dressed and headed home, and when I walked up the stairs to Jamie’s and my bedroom that night, we talked very little. As I climbed into bed with Jamie, I began—with my thinking brain again in charge—to realize the enormity of what I had done.
The consequences of the affair unfold
The next day, Jamie left for a couple of days to be with his parents. When he returned, he grabbed a few of his things and moved in with a friend. For a long time he would come over after work, and we would sit and talk about what had happened while sipping claret lemonades.
It was all talk, though. Neither Jamie nor I dealt with our feelings. We successfully put them away so that we could get on with the business of being a family. We agreed, of course, that no extramarital activities would be allowed in the future, not that they were ever supposed to occur in the first place.
I was very upset because I had acted against my deeply held moral creeds, and I knew that I had grievously hurt Jamie. It was obvious that he was in anguish, and I felt terrible about what I had done. Jamie had always loved me, always been good to me; and I had betrayed him and the trust he had in me. I found myself facing a shattered marriage, and I started cycling through it in my mind over and over, wondering how I could have been so unthinking, so uncaring. Unfortunately I didn’t have an answer.
Jamie told me once that I had acted against him just as my father had done to me; that hit me like nothing else he could have said. My betrayal was just like my father’s betrayal of me.
I disapproved of that behavior. It was strictly against my belief system as well as my mental picture of who I was. Yet, even so, I did it. It makes me wonder what force or motivation was so compelling as to make me act against my self-interest. A friend told me that there is a name for this condition. It is called cognitive dissonance.It means just what I said, that my behavior was inconsistent with my belief system.
After that night, I only saw Jack briefly one more time, as it was time to end the relationship. After saying good-bye to Jack, I never called him again and did not see him until many years later at his daughter’s wedding.
Jamie came very close to leaving me, as his love for me never fully recovered. He didn’t trust me around men again. For decades, the affair shattered what he thought our relationship entailed. It was, for him, a permanent wound that he put away, at least for a considerable time. During the remainder of May and well into June of that year, the brief affair and its consequences gradually faded from our lives.
What our discussions lacked back then was any insight into what had been going on with me or why I had perpetuated the one-night stand. We had no resources available to us to even begin to comprehend the dynamics at play.
In time Jamie came to the conclusion, which I had known from the beginning, that he was never in competition with Jack for my affection. I tried to emphasize to Jamie that my interest in Jack had not really been about sex, nor was it fueled by romantic desire or eroticism. No, it was conditions at home that caused my emotional brain to be in control. And I never would have had an affair if my thinking brain had been fully operative, no, I would have realized that my thinking was muddled, and that I had confused what I wanted from what I needed, which, I learned, is a sequela of sexual abuse.v I thought that I wanted a distraction from Jeffrey’s coughing, and a sense of control, which I somehow believed would be accomplished by having sex with Jack. But what I needed was not a distraction; I needed to ask Jamie to stay home some nights to support me while Jeffrey coughed. Even more I needed for Jamie and me together to search for a new doctor for Jeffrey.
Further Reading
This episode from my life is just one of numerous episodes I experienced throughout much of my adult life dictated by the unrecognized effects from the sexual abuse I suffered when I was only eleven. The earlier abuse is described in my first blog: Becoming a Victim of Incest/
The story of my life is chronicled in my book: Demons Hidden Within. The book, written under by pen name, Susan Montgomery, is available from my publisher, Robert D. Reed Publishers, Brandon, OR, or from numerous book distributors. Also, you can visit my website at: Demons Hidden
Citations
i Cole, Pamela M., and Frank W. Putnam, “Effect of incest on self and social functioning: A devlopmental psychopathology perspective,” J. Consulting Clin. Psychol., 60(2), 174-184, 1992.
ii Blume, Sue, op. cit., p 216.
iii Briere, John N., and Diana M. Elliot, Immediate and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse, Future Child, 4(2), 54-69, Summer/Fall, 1994.
iv van der Kolk, B., The Body Keeps the Score, Viking, NY, pp. 62-63, 2014.
v Engel, Beverly, Facing the pain of child abuse, Psychology Today UK, no date.