According to the stats provided, only 3-5% of affairs actually progress to marriage. While not part of article, would think think most of those are likely “rushed” into during limerence. The article also states 75% of second marriages fail. (No mention of third marriages, which is likely higher). The odds of success of an affair borne marriage is just minuscule.
My take, and this is not data based, is that the very small percentage that are defined as successful are actually split. I believe there are “successful miserable” and “successful happy”. I think there are a significant portion of people who are “successful miserable” because they trashed so much, and are so hard-headed, they “make it work” to save face and not admit what would be there biggest life’s failure. I further submit that the little, bitty, tiny percent that are successful and happy, truly BOTH had a toxic, dysfunctional or abusive marriage they exited. Even then, happy is likely defined as “better than”.
Article excerpt:
Dr. Pittman’s nine defects in the dynamics of affairs that become marriages chart the trajectory of love as it arcs from a forbidden romance to an established marriage to a marital breakup.
These nine defects include:
1. While still married to others, the affair partners become immersed in “stimulating unreality,” but the second marriage illuminates reality. “Only after their marriage did the divorce become real enough to see that it was a horrible mistake. They were so caught up in the infatuation that they never got around to figuring out if what they were doing was sane.”
2. The cheaters who wrecked a family (or two) and inflicted much pain on innocent people may feel no or little guilt during the affair but become overwhelmed with guilt after they marry.
3. Divorces drain both financially and emotionally. After affair partners marry, the new couple may feel a disparity in what had to be sacrificed to bring them together.
4. Unfaithful couples who marry may believe that the life after the marriage will be as good as life during the affair, and that “[t]he greater the sacrifices, the greater the expectations for the new marriage.” In short, “[t]he more people enjoy the battles involved in wrecking and escaping marriages, the less they are likely to enjoy the business as usual of the new marriage.”
5. The affair partners, who were unfaithful, develop a distrust of marriage and for the affair partner who is now a spouse. A marriage that begins on an untruth cannot have a trusting foundation.
6. During the affair and the divorce, the unfaithful couple isolates and insulate themselves, and they retreat to a private little world “protected from the devastation that they have created, safe from anyone who tries to pull them apart.” In this regime, memories or even mention of the betrayed spouse can be difficult. Later, the now married couple may long to reconnect with these people; however, “Everyone involved is hurt by the betrayal and not as forgiving as they have expected. They often find that they only have each other and that can be very lonely.”
7. When the romance fades, as it does in most marriages, romantics do not understand that this is part of the growth of the marriage, and they do not know how to nurture “a deeper more meaningful relationship”; rather, “they believe that they have just fallen out of love.”
8. During the affair and the divorce the affair couple convinces each other that the defective marriage is the fault of the betrayed spouse. To acknowledge otherwise, now that the remarriage has taken place, seems a betrayal of “the rescue fantasies that fed the affair in the first place.”
9. The absence of a shared history that nurtures a comforting familiarity to relationships that begin earlier in life makes talking about the past difficult. An affair that wrecked a first marriage makes it painful and embarrassing for both spouses to discuss the past because it may promote jealousy and insecurity. Affair partners who marry do not want to hear the good qualities of the previous marriage and spouses, nor about any good times the former partners had. Trying to start over can be lonely and disheartening.