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How Affair-Proof Is Your Marriage?
by Dr. Willard Harley
When a man and woman marry, they share high expectations. They commit themselves to meeting certain intense and intimate needs in each other on an exclusive basis.
Each agrees to "forsake all others," giving each other the exclusive right to meet these intimate needs.
That does not simply imply that all needs are to be met by a spouse, but that there are a few basic needs that most of us strictly reserve for the marriage bond. Most people expect their spouses to meet these special needs, since they have agreed not to allow anyone else to meet them.
For example, when a man agrees to an exclusive relationship with his wife, he depends on her to meet his sexual need. If she fulfills this need, he finds in her a continuing source of intense pleasure, and his love grows stronger.
However, if his need goes unmet, quite the opposite happens. He begins to associate her with frustration.
If the frustration continues, he may decide she "just doesn't like sex" and may try to make the best of it. But his strong need for sex remains unfulfilled. His commitment to an exclusive sexual relationship with his wife has left him with the choice of sexual frustration or infidelity. Some men never give in; they manage to make the best of it over the years. But many do succumb to the temptation of an affair. I have talked to hundreds of them in my couseling offices.
Another example is the wife who gives her husband the exclusive right to meet her need for intimate conversation. Whenever they talk together with a depth of honesty and openness not found in conversation with others, she finds him to be the source of her greatest pleasure.
But when he refuses to give her the undivided attention she craves, he becomes associated with her greatest frustration.
Some women simply go through their married lives frustrated, but others cannot resist the temptation to let someone else meet this important emotional need. And when they do, an affair is the likely outcome.
Article written by Dr. Gary Chapman. Based on the book, His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley. Published by Revell Publishing. | 
