Infidelity

People are most often ''incredibly devastated by their partner's emotional affair,'' says Peggy Vaughan, who has researched infidelity for 20 years, as quoted by Peterson (2003). While many marriages are able to be repaired after infidelity, many other people “separate over it, divorce over it, this breaking of a trust, a bond.''

Glass, in a report for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, reports that the powerful reactions of the betrayed spouse are “similar to post-traumatic stress symptoms of the victims of catastrophic events” and can include stress “physiological hyper-arousal, flashbacks and intrusive images.” Glass explains that other common reactions to the “loss of innocence and shattered trust” include “obsessive pondering of the details of the affair” and continuous monitoring for further signs of betrayal or infidelity.

Glass has observed that the impact of the discovery of infidelity on the betrayed person varies depending on their pre-existing levels of suspicion and trust. She explains, “The most severely traumatized are those who had the greatest trust and were the most unsuspecting.”

It is not just the betrayed spouse that is left reeling, according to Glass. Spouses on both sides of an affair are likely to feel depressed, anxious and grief-stricken upon disclosure of infidelity. The involved spouse may fear that they will never be forgiven while also feeling sadness over the end of the affair.

When infidelity takes place among couples with children, it impacts the entire family. According to Lusterman (1998), children of any age are usually affected profoundly by a parent's infidelity. Children can sense when their parents are troubled, and often know much more about what is going on than parents realize. Children affected by a parent's infidelity often grow up to be unfaithful to their own partners or have difficulty forming and maintaining trusting, intimate relationships.