5 Reasons Ending An Affair Is Difficult

Jan 22, 2025

“The endings won’t end you.” K. Tolnoe

I work with people all day, every day who are either involved in an affair themselves or have recently discovered their partner’s affair. It’s some of the most brutal, heartbreaking, and challenging work I do.

But it’s also some of the deepest, most profound, and most rewarding work I do: To hold someone’s deepest secrets is to be trusted at a deep and personal level, and to help someone navigate their darkest and most confusing moments is an honor that I do not take lightly.

Something I hear quite frequently is how hard it is to release an affair partner:

  • I know it’s what I should do….
  • I know it would be the right thing to do….
  • I know it would hurt my partner in ways I can’t even begin to imagine if they ever found out….

So why is it so hard to end an affair?

Even when people try to break it off, they often find themselves back in the same affair relationship a few weeks later.

The context of affairs is intoxicating, because it involves risk and adventure, something new and unknown. Having an affair is often likened to taking an addictive drug they can’t seem to stop.

The reasons someone gets involved in an affair aren’t logical, so the reasons they have such difficulty ending an affair aren’t logical either.

All our reasoning is emotional: It’s our emotions that justify an affair in the beginning, and our emotions that make the detox so painful.

Here are the 5 reasons why ending an affair is so difficult:

  1. An affair is an escape. It’s an escape from the struggles within our marriage that we’re not prepared to address.
  2. An affair is a story. We’ve created a ‘Happily Ever After’ in our mind about how this could potentially become a real, long-term relationship where we’re both physically and emotionally available to each other. The story includes what life together as a couple could look and feel like, as well as how it could work and function.
    But the reality is: We have no idea! It’s a story about a future that doesn’t yet exist, and none of us can actually predict the future.
  3. We don’t want to be alone. We haven’t felt this seen and understood in a very long time, and we don’t want to be without this again. Oftentimes, we bond with people over the “shared trauma” of a challenging marriage or affair. Both people in an affair are usually feeling disconnected in their respective marriages, and it feels like only they can understand each others’ situations. It helps to feel less alone, more justified, and better understood. Every single person on the planet wants to feel understood in their most intimate relationship, which leads us to…
  4. We’re afraid. We use squishy language when we end an affair, because we’re afraid of letting go:
    • “We need to take a break…”
    • “I’m going to try again with my spouse…”
    • “I just can’t keep doing this right now…”

None of these common explanations speak with certainty or finality, because the truth is… we kind of want the affair partner to hold out hope and wait for us. We’re not entirely sure of our decision, because it’s scary.

5. An affair lets us be a different version of ourselves. Often what we’re most drawn to in our affair partners (believe it or not) isn’t so much the other person, but instead who we get to be in that relationship. Who we are with our affair partner is often very, very different from who we are as a wife or husband inside our marriage. That part of us wants to be expressed.

Understanding the reasons behind your affair is only the beginning… but it’s often the hardest and most painful part of the experience.

If you’re struggling with your own affair or you’re reeling from the discovery of your partner’s affair, I can help you. This might be your first affair (so of course it’s confusing), but it’s the 2,000th affair I’ve seen… so I know the path through this.

And there is a path through this. You just have to take the next step for yourself.

If you’re struggling in your marriage, I will help you find the clarity you need to re-commit to making your marriage work or the strength and peace of mind to lovingly release it.

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If You’re Struggling In Your Marriage…

I will help you find the clarity you need to re-commit to making your marriage work
or the strength and peace of mind to lovingly release it.