Go watch this video now, it's really down to earth and I found it very useful. There's also an ebook available. highly recommended. The Magic of Making up - check it out now...

Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may hear something like this: "I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is dead. There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone. We've grown apart. There was nothing happening in the marriage and the affair just happened."

Visit The Infidelity Coach's website.

These statements are rationalizations and fail to "get at" the underlying issues.

Key points:

1. It's as if a marriage is an animal gone bad. A marriage does not have a life of it's own. One is "married" as a result of making some promises and signing a paper at one point. Afterwards two people continue communicating and acting toward one another in particular ways that they hope will help them get what they individually want. Just as there is no "marriage," there is no such thing as a "relationship." There are, however, ways of relating for which each person is responsible.

2. We idealize "marriage" or "romantic relationships" with the expectation we will get what we want, without much effort to boot.

3. From day one most of us don't have a clue about how to get, build, nurture and maintain healthy and intimate ways of relating. We need 'love 101' and it's not there. We rely upon experimentation or bad models.

4. If the "marriage" is dead, why in the world would one choose to have an affair? Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It really is stupid. You add a whole layer of deceit and shame that eventually will result in consequences more dire than approaching your spouse and saying, "I'm really unhappy. What I'm doing with you obviously is not working. I want out."

5. If the "marriage" is bad, obviously, I don't have to look at me. I can blame "it" or the other. Some of us find it difficult to look at me.

Tip: If your partner/spouse is having and affair and blames it on the "marriage," don't buy into it. The "marriage" is not the problem. You are not the problem. Your partner chose the affair out of ignorance, fear or inadequacy.

The "My Marriage Made Me Do It" is just one of 7 affairs outlined in my E-book, "Break Free From the Affair." For more information on the issues behind the other kinds of affairs and tips for dealing with them, Visit The Infidelity Coach, Dr Huizenga's website.

Dr. Robert Huizenga, has helped hundreds of couples over the past two decades.