The 7 Steps (Almost) Every Marriage Experiences Before a Major Affair
And what the experts leave out.
So many of us, after discovering our spouse has been unfaithful, spend so many hours crushing our head between our hands, pondering, “Why? Why?”
Many are familiar with researcher John Gottman, Ph.D., whose marriage lab brought us “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.
At last, Gottman, partnering with two other researchers, has weighed in on the topic of why people have affairs.
According to Gottman et. al., the development of an affair situation follows a predictable sequence, which they call the Gottman-Rusbult-Glass Cascade.
They report that affairs begin when one partner begins feeling shut out of the other’s attention and care. One partner concludes that they can’t count on the other one, leading to feelings of distance and hurt and the thought that the shut-out partner would be better off elsewhere.
Steps in the Gottman-Rusbult-Glass Cascade:
1.) Turning Away. In his previous research, Gottman found that constantly in marriage, partners make verbal and nonverbal requests for attention and support. He calls these “bids.” A “bid” would be, for…
