Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 21, 1994                   TAG: 9402210055
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

SOMETIMES, IT'S JUST THE SECRET THAT MAKES IT LOVELY

Someone who's seeing "someone they shouldn't" will become preoccupied with the affair because they can't tell anyone, says University of Virginia psychology professor Daniel Wegner.

Wegner is principal author of "The Allure of Secret Relationships," published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"You create this funny state of mind where you try not to think about the person you have a relationship with," Wegner said in an interview. "The idea that you're trying to keep it to yourself provides a good way to ruminate about it."

Wegner, who has done research on thought suppression, said people end up thinking about things they try not to think about. "It's a good way to create an obsession."

His study involved two surveys and an experiment. The surveys asked subjects to list past romantic relationships and crushes they thought about most and least. The study found that obsessive preoccupation was linked to reports that the relationship was secret.

The experiment involved mixed-sex partners who were told to play "footsie" under the table in the presence of another pair. When this was kept secret, greater attraction was reported for the partner than when it was not.

Wegner said the idea for the experiment originated from an anecdote of a friend who was attracted to a woman he met at a university at which he was interviewing for a job. "They found themselves playing footsie" while sitting next to each other at a dinner with other people, he said. "He got the job and they're now married and pregnant with their first child."

A lot of relationships that start covertly end in marriage, he said, "but sometimes it's not that great."

The allure of a secret relationship might also involve the grass-is-greener effect, Wegner said. As soon as the secret "is out you realize that it's not that good. You think it's special but it's the secret and not the person."

The study raises some interesting issues, said Virginia Commonwealth University psychology professor and private marriage counselor Everett Worthington. But the findings have "more implications for real relationships than I'd draw."

A thought about a former flame "might pop into your mind, but if it's not going to be obsessive it's not going to be a problem," Worthington said.

Dr. Frank Pittman, an Atlanta psychiatrist who wrote "Private Lies," a book about affairs, said once people start living a lie "they're alienated from the real world. They're escaping reality in order to merge souls with this nut doing the same thing."

Pittman added that gender differences help define why some people engage in secret relationships.

Women who have affairs "know they're being mean, but they justify their meanness because their husband's beat them or whatever," he said. Men who have affairs "say it's a necessary aspect of their masculinity and has nothing to do with their marriage. They assure themselves that their marriage is OK."