MARRIAGE Spouses need to guard against improper relationships

Even a friendship can turn problematic.
By H.J. CUMMINS
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Marriages can go bad from inside and out.
The old image of lovers running from unhappy marriages still holds.
A common version of that rift runs something like this, according to Baltimore psychologist Shirley Glass, who studies infidelity: A wife is unhappy. She complains. Her husband, insulted, withdraws. She gets frustrated, and gives up in silence. He thinks she's finally happy. Instead, she has just "checked out" of the marriage.
But there's also the growing specter of lovers running to one another -- drawn by the tempting mix of attraction and opportunity.
"These start as friendships by people who are not even aware of being dissatisfied with their marriages," she said. "They have found someone they feel a compatibility with, common interests and excitement. Some of these affairs take months and even years to develop. It's insidious."
Affairs have the attraction of fantasy, of forbidden fruit.
They also feel more egalitarian than the lovers' marriages. Two-thirds of women in affairs, according to Glass' research, complained that they are more understanding of their husbands' problems and feelings than the reverse; 90 percent of them said that's not true of their lovers.
Among unfaithful husbands, just half said their wives matched them in sensitivity; 70 percent said their affair partners did.
Lovers often cherish a piece of one another overlooked by their spouses -- a love of poetry or spirituality, for example. To spot this, Glass asks her clients to consider: Who do you become when you're with your lover? What do you like about yourself in that other relationship?
"We have different parts of ourselves we want recognized," she said. "Multiple relationships have to do with the fact that people really do want it all."