Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: The Seven Types of Affairs

Four of the seven have almost nothing to do with the relationship. That is the part Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky wanted to get to in this conversation, because the people who arrive at her office blaming themselves are usually the ones whose partner's reasons were never about them in the first place.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky, who goes by Liz, is a marriage and family therapist running a clinic with offices in Virginia Beach and Fairfax, Virginia, where she also trains other therapists in emotionally focused couples counseling. She is licensed across roughly seven states, which is a consequence of military life. She is a military spouse from a dual-military family, her husband was deployed while this was recorded, and a large part of her caseload is military couples, which shapes much of what she has seen. This is her second appearance here, and she hosts a podcast on communication in military relationships.

The seven types come from published work by Scott Woolley, an international trainer in emotionally focused therapy. Three of them are relational. The protest or revenge affair, where each partner answers the other, which Liz watched run back and forth for seventeen years in a couple who were still working to repair it. The come-and-get-me affair, which is really about manufacturing jealousy or testing whether the love holds, and which she sees more often early in a relationship than late. And the burned-out exit affair, a way of ending a marriage without having to say the words. She and Lisa also cover what tends to come first: either conflict that spirals over nothing, or a couple who have stopped talking altogether in order to avoid it.

The other four sit with the individual. Escaping life stress into romance, the version that can run for years and sometimes produces two households, which Liz says people rarely manage to end, because there is genuine attachment and loyalty on both sides. The hedge fund affair, where somebody braced for abandonment keeps a second person in reserve. The power player affair, which is about control rather than attachment and tends to look like a series of emotionally distant encounters, and which Lisa recognizes instantly from this audience. And the compulsive affair, which behaves like an addiction, is usually about numbing anxiety, and often traces back to bullying or abuse in childhood. Liz is clear about recovery: the individual types take considerably longer than a relational repair, growth should be visible along the way, and none of the context converts a choice into an accident.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The seven types of affairs, and what each one is actually driven by
• Why four of the seven have little to do with the state of the relationship
• The protest affair, the come-and-get-me affair, and the burned-out exit affair
• What tends to precede a relational affair, and why "we're roommates" is one signal
• The escape affair, and why attachment on both sides makes it so hard to end
• The power player affair: control rather than romance, and where it comes from
• Why the compulsive affair behaves like an addiction, and what recovery involves
• Why context can make a choice easier and never makes it an accident

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why the seven types matter when you're busy blaming yourself
3:00 Liz's background, and what deployment does to a marriage
8:00 The protest or revenge affair
10:00 The come-and-get-me affair
12:00 The burned-out exit affair, and the signs that come before
17:00 Escaping life stress into romance, and the two-household version
22:00 The hedge fund affair
23:30 The power player affair, and where it comes from
28:00 The compulsive affair, and why it works like an addiction
35:00 Is there hope, and why it is still a choice

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky at Communicate & Connect: https://communicateandconnect.com/

🎧 More with Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky on this podcast
Ep 279: Learning to Trust Again After Betrayal

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.