with

Mike Bellah

 "The key to getting free of an extramarital affair is discovering the fantasy."---Jeff

"This illusion that this special person can fill all my empty places, can meet all my needs, would have worn away. Because in reality no one can do that."---Jeff

"With a little work, Francesca and her own husband could have experienced those things."---Jeff

Note: This column is the second in a two part series. If you have not yet read the first, click here. 

"The key to getting free of an extramarital affair is discovering the fantasy," says my friend Jeff (not his real name). I've asked Jeff, himself a survivor of a midlife affair, to respond to The Bridges of Madison County, the popular movie starring Meryl Streep as Francesca Johnson, an Iowa housewife who at 45 has a brief tryst with National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid.

"But you don't want to believe it's fantasy," continues Jeff. "You want to believe what Francesca and Robert do--that these two people can look at each other across a crowded room and it's love at first sight." Jeff says that love at first sight is a myth despite what the story books say. He remembers his own revelation.

"I can remember the day when it hit me," he says. "It was months after I had broken off any physical contact with this person. It struck me one day that I didn't know her--that I never knew her--that the person I thought I loved so intensely didn't exist. She lived only in my mind." Jeff says it was then that he finally became emotionally free from his affair. "Because then I realized when I had these feelings--despite all my efforts not to--of loving someone other than my wife, I realized that the person no longer had a name."

Jeff says that he now believes he had been in love with only the feeling of love, and that he read into the other person what he wanted to see there. And she had done the same. "What happens is that reality finally destroys the fantasy," he says. 

Jeff believes that if Francesca actually had left her husband and family for Robert, their relationship would have been short-lived. "Because she probably would have hated him for making her leave her family," explains Jeff. "And besides, this illusion that this special person can fill all my empty places, can meet all my needs, would have worn away. Because in reality no one can do that." 

I ask Jeff how married midlifers can prevent affairs. "You need to talk to your spouse about it," he says. "You need to talk about the flirtations and temptations that you experience. And you need to decide before they happen what you're going to do about it." Jeff also believes his own "good-natured" teasing could have prompted the initial flirtation. He says he will be more careful in the future.

Finally, Jeff says that married midlifers need to work on their romance. He believes couples can learn from what Francesca and Robert do together in the movie. "You don't have to be strangers to do those things," he says. "That's one of the tragedies of the story. With a little work, Francesca and her own husband could have experienced those things."

Jeff says he wants to assure those who are now involved in an affair that there is hope. "I didn't think there was a way out," he says. "All I could see were negative things--people being hurt. And I wanted to avoid that. And somehow I thought that I could fix it." But Jeff says those caught in an affair can't fix things on their own. "Get professional help," he warns. "Get it quickly, and remember, there is hope!"

My story is similar to Jeff's.