Affairs are loaded with romanticism, morality, mythology, and intense emotions. They're not really about sex, but about pain and fear and the desire to feel alive. They're also about betrayal. Most people enter marriage believing they would never have an affair. A great many of them have one or more affairs. Before you can decide what to do with the affair in your life you need to know what it means. These are the different types of affairs:

Conflict Avoidance Affair

Affair Conflict Avoiders are nice ?? they're terrified to be anything but nice, for fear that conflict will lead to abandonment or losing control. They don't have a way to stand up to each other when there's a problem, so they can't resolve their difference and the marriage erodes. An "equal opportunity" affair.

Intimacy Avoidance Affair

Affair Intimacy Avoiders are frightened of getting too close, so they keep the barriers high between them. Conflict is one barrier, affairs are another. Their emotional connection with each other is through frequent and intense conflict. Often, each spouse becomes involved in an affair. These couples are the mirror opposite of the Conflict Avoiders.

Sexual Addiction Affair

Sexual Addicts use sex over and over again to numb inner pain and emptiness, much like alcoholics use alcohol. Among married people, men are sexual addicts more often than women.

Split Self Affair

The Split Selves have tried to do marriage right. Both spouses have sacrificed their own feelings and needs to take care of others, and the deprivation has caught up with one of them. The affair is serious, long-term and passionate. The spouse who is having the affair focuses on deciding between the marriage and the affair partner and avoids looking at the inner split. Most often this is a man's affair, but that may be changing.

Exit Affair

Affair Exiters are Conflict Avoiders at heart, but they take it further. One spouse has already decided to leave the marriage and the affair provides the justification. The other partner usually blames the affair rather than looking at how their marriage got to this point. Another "equal opportunity" affair.