Synopsis: This mini love lesson deals with the
question of what infidelity really is; New World infidelity; answers if
it is the act or the agreement; considers if couples
should breakup over infidelity; explores whether infidelity means he or
she does not love me; considers forgiveness; and more.
What Is Infidelity Really?
Wow, do people vary on what they call infidelity. Celeste said, “If
you look at another woman for more than 30 seconds you’re cheating”.
Breck said, “My wife and I agree that it is okay to have sex with
someone else when you’re more than 100 miles away from home. So for us
infidelity is sex with someone else within 100 miles”.
Kerri expressed that “it doesn’t matter what one does with their own
or anyone else’s body, it only matters what they do with their heart.
Heart infidelity is the only kind that really counts”. Alfred
proclaimed, “If you even think about another with lust you already have
been unfaithful, committed infidelity, and you are an adulterer”.
Jeannie replied to Alfred, “If that is true, one might as well go ahead
and have sex with anybody that strikes your fancy because I think just
about everybody thinks about others with lust, and they may be weird if
they don’t”.
Maurice told of his wife temporarily leaving him after finding him
looking at porn on the Internet because she thought that was being
unfaithful. Later he discovered her reading the raunchiest sex scenes
imaginable, which explicitly were described in her so-called romance
novels. Dolores said, “For us it’s about being excluded. My husband
and I do lots of threesome sex with our friends, and sometimes foursomes
too. If we did it without the other one present that would be an act
of infidelity.
Jennifer said, “My husband, Jarrett, and I have agreed not to do
anything that would endanger us bringing a disease home, so it’s really
about ‘safe sex’ for us and, of course, no unwanted pregnancies please.
Marlowe remarked, “Where I come from having intercourse secretly with
somebody other than your spouse is being unfaithful but oral sex, anal
sex and everything else, except intercourse, doesn’t qualify as
infidelity. “I disagree strongly”, said Lucille. “Infidelity starts
with flirting, a passionate kiss is going way too far, and everything
and anything beyond that is certainly infidelity and betrayal”. Carl
said, “I think it’s any time you break an important promise of any
kind”.
As you can see, people can have very different ideas about this thing
we call infidelity. In couples counseling I’ve seen many couples
disagree on what is infidelity and this is an issue which is getting a
lot more complicated.
New World Infidelity
Are you being unfaithful if you do mild flirting online with people
you will never meet? How about talking really dirty and super-raunchy
seductive online? What about just listening to others do that? Then
there is online sex talk while mutually masturbating, and also having
Skype sex with strangers.
A couple came to me and he was arguing she was unfaithful because her
Avatar (a sort of alter ego, comic book like character she created
online) was having sex with other people’s avatars in Second Life (an
online, elaborate, alternate cyberspace world). She said that was
ridiculous, and it was just naughty fun and he shouldn’t be such an old
world prude. What do you think?
Is It the Act or the Agreement?
I like to suggest to couples that, from a very heart-centered
position, they try to talk with each other about what they sexually
want, might want, don’t want and could conceivably come to want. Then I
like to suggest that they make an agreement about what’s okay for now.
I also suggest that they include in that agreement a sort of clause
that allows for renegotiation later. That’s because people change and
renegotiation discussions, done with love, may prevent a lot of trouble.
There are some husbands who say “my wife will never agree to the new
and different things I’m starting to want to do” and there are some
wives who say “my husband would never understand some of my wants”,
gender role reversal of these statements happens also. Then there are
the lovers who are just too scared to bring up anything different than
the standard stuff.
Sometimes it takes a lot of love and courage to deal with the truth
of human nature. Most unfortunately many couples don’t renegotiate
their fidelity agreement until after one of them, or maybe both of them,
has broken the original agreement. So many people make fidelity
agreements out of doing what they think is expected of them rather than
what really fits them.
No small number secretly know or suspect they won’t keep a
fidelity/infidelity agreement they enter into, but they make it anyway
because it’s what people are supposed to do. I like to suggest couples
think about custom-tailoring their relationship with one another as that
is a more unique, loving thing to do. As you’ve seen from the above
examples, couples fidelity agreements can come in a lot of different
forms.
A Loving Approach to Another’s Infidelity
If you discover that your beloved has been unfaithful to you what should you do? The first thing to do is
don’t do anything immediately.
The best act of healthy self-love, which you’re probably going to need a
lot of, is to go very slowly and do not do anything rash. Definitely
don’t make any impulsive life-changing decisions.
The next thing to do is notice your pain and if possible do something
healthy to ease it. Some people go to a good friend or family member
and talk and get care and hugs. Some people say a lot of self-affirming
things and give themselves a hug. Others do a lot of praying. Various
acts of healthy self-love definitely are in order.
Then it’s time to try thinking things through, difficult though that
may be. Getting help from a counselor, or therapist, or minister or
someone like that can do a lot of good.
At some point going to your beloved and asking them to work with you
on what’s happened, what it means, and what’s to be done about it is
necessary if you’re going to have a healthy outcome.
Going into a rage, running to a lawyer and filing for divorce,
becoming physically violent, or getting immediately lost in drugs or
alcohol are all on the
what not to do list.
I’m biased, but couples counseling is ever so frequently the best thing
to do about it. Be sure you go to a licensed couples counselor or
couples therapist, not just an individual therapist because they often
don’t know what to do that will help you as a couple.
At some point it will be important to note and work to understand
where your pain really comes from. In these situations a great deal of
it may come from the way you were raised to think about infidelity.
Lots of people around the world take infidelity very seriously, and lots
of people around the world do not take it very seriously and those,
therefore, are not so severely effected by infidelity. Those less
severely affected seem to get healthier, more constructive results when
infidelity does occur. It’s amazing how much of your psychological pain
can come from your culture and from your family upbringing and if you
had been raised differently it might not hurt as much.
You can take a very loving approach to your unfaithful beloved. The
people who do that usually get the best results in the long run. If you
loved them before, just because you discovered they were unfaithful
doesn’t mean you stop loving them. Remember, a lot of people have said
things like “love cures all ailments of the heart” and “love can conquer
all”. With lots of healthy self-love and with lots of hard-working,
and maybe with heavy doses of ‘tough love’, things may be able to get
better than they ever were before in your couples love relationship.
A Loving Approach to Your Own Infidelity
If you desire to do actions which your beloved would count as being
unfaithful and you know if they discover your actions of infidelity they
will hurt a lot, you have a lot of thinking to do. If you’ve already
done some of those actions you still have a lot of thinking to do. What
are you doing and why are you doing it? Those questions are easy to
ask but without assistance may be nearly impossible to actually answer
thoroughly and accurately.
I like to suggest that you start with wondering about your own
healthy self-love. Lots of infidelity is done as an attempt at doing
some sort of, possibly needed, favor or boost to the self. I also like
to suggest that you be as loving as you possibly can be to your beloved
and to everybody else around.
Too many people having an affair start treating their spouse with
indifference or distancing actions usually out of guilt or worse. The
situation needs more love and probably more truth. I suggest that
‘beating yourself up’ with a lot of guilt, shame, self negation, etc.
usually just makes everything get worse. A better idea is to make the
best ‘response-able’ set of actions happen. Again a good,
love-knowledgeable counselor may prove invaluable.
I recommend you consider taking a very love-centered approach to
yourself, to your spouse and even to the other person involved, along
with anyone else effected like children, family, etc.. Then work toward
being able to live truthfully.
Know that having an affair or anything like that has been discovered
to usually cause a lot of stress-related health problems and also quite a
bit of poor self-care. It won’t help anyone if you ruin your health,
have a stroke or heart attack and turn into an invalid. Take your
vitamins, exercise, do things that relax you, etc. With love and truth,
and often with the help of a good, love-knowledgeable therapist, people
get through all this and come out on the other side often better than
when they went in.
A Dozen Common Reasons That Infidelity Happens
1. Genetic Predisposition A wealth of recent,
scientific evidence points to people being predisposed, especially those
who may have a strong sex drive, and, therefore, being subconsciously
compelled toward having sexual and perhaps emotional relations with a
variety of people.
Some evidence suggests that people of higher than average quality,
talent and psychosocial strengths may be especially so predisposed.
This is referring to ‘traits’ not a moral imperative. That makes sense
in an evolutionary way for the good of the human race because it keeps
mixing the gene pool with higher quality contributions.
2. Love Starvation People who are under-loved are
much like people who are underfed. Their survival mechanisms push them
to become adequately fed. Love works much like a psychological food and
so people subconsciously and automatically seek it where they can find
it when they don’t have enough nourishment in their regular life.
3. Ego Boost Romance, sex, being pursued, seduced
etc. is for many people a great ego boost and they feel much better
about themselves and their life, but perhaps they also feel guilty when
they intimately have been with someone else.
4. Family And/or Cultural Programming Many
people’s families or the subcultural group that they grew up in
subconsciously programmed them for infidelity. For many being
unfaithful is ‘just what you do’, while at the same time giving lip
service to standard morality.
5. Establishing Intimate Independence Infidelity,
for a fair number of people, is a secret way to establish their own,
independent, intimate selves. By way of infidelity they privately see
themselves as not controlled by society, religion, their parents, their
spouse, etc. but rather by only themselves.
6. Curiosity A bunch of people just have to find
out what it would be like. Others may have established a mated
relationship early in their lives without experiencing other
relationships.
7. Adventure A major way quite a few people make
their life interesting, full of excitement, drama, a sense of being
fully alive, etc. is through acts involving infidelity.
8. Desire for Variety Some people just are not
going to be monogamous although they can be very loyal in a polyamore or
other alternate lifestyle arrangement.
9. Revenge There are those who get into infidelity
as an act of vengeance because their spouse either cheated on them or
has been particularly unloving or difficult in other ways.
10. Emotional Compensation Some people are proving
to themselves and others that they still are attractive, ‘have what it
takes’, still are potent, can keep up with their infidelity-prone peer
group or a group they identify with, or may be trying to give themselves
evidence that they are not yet dysfunctionally old or decrepit, etc.
11. Avoiding Regrets There are those who want to
make sure they are not going to miss out on any major ‘psycho-emotional
trips’ that other people get to go on in life and which they might
regret missing. Infidelity, a love affair, a higher number of
conquests, etc. are on their secret ‘bucket list’.
12. Seeking a New and Better Love Mate This is the
one almost everybody fears and it can be true both subconsciously and
consciously. Thus, some people may be involved in infidelity without
consciously knowing they are actively seeking a better love mate.
There are lots of other reasons infidelity occurs. The one most
talked about in many circles is the infidelity which occurs when there
is something wrong in the marriage or love relationship. Lots of people
jump to that conclusion. A lot of other people jump to the conclusion
that they are in some way sexually or relationally inferior, so they
start blaming themselves a lot which usually makes things worse.
The other unloving source of infidelity is to think of the
‘unfaithful’ person as very blameworthy i.e. ‘a dog, a slut, a scumbag, a
whore, etc. Other blaming and self-blaming usually don’t lead anywhere
worth going, and certainly don’t add accurate understanding to the
picture.
Should a Couple Breakup over Infidelity?
Most of what I see suggests strongly that people who breakup over
infidelity later very often wish they had not. Most couples who use an
infidelity experience as a motivation to work on improving their
relationship usually are very glad they did so.
The wounds of infidelity frequently are very hard to repair.
However, with a lot of love, truth and reassurance relationships often
can grow stronger than they were before the infidelity. Of course, that
is only true if both people in the relationship are working at it with
lots of love and truth. Certainly a breakup is more likely to be
necessary if there are a lot of repeated infidelities with lots of lies,
deception, dishonesty, manipulation, etc. accompanied by a lot of
emotional pain and life chaos.
Does Infidelity Mean He or She Doesn’t Love Me Anymore?
Quite
frequently infidelity doesn’t mean any such thing. As the above List
of 12 Reasons people get into an infidelity experience shows, a lot of
other causal factors may be involved.
What About Forgiveness?
Love is forgiving. Love can forgive anything and everything. To do
that it has to be strong and great love. 1) Forgiving oneself, 2)
forgiving one’s partner and 3) forgiving the way you both, in accidental
teamwork, did not avoid the infidelity – all three usually are
required.
The inability to forgive may be linked to low self-love. It is
important to remember that in ‘healthy self-love’ one always can be
cautious and adequately self protective while at the same time be
forgiving. See the entry in the
Subject Index under
Behavior titled “Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love”
Learn More
There is ever so much more to learn about this subject, and learning
more about it may do you and those you care about a lot of good. To
learn more go to the Problems and Pain entries under the Subject Index
at this site and dig in. In particular you might want to take a look at
the entries titled “
Adultery and No Divorce Love”, “
Love Affairs: Bad, Good and Otherwise” and “
Trust and Mistrust in Love”.
As always – Go and Grow in Love
Dr. J Richard Cookerly
♥ Love Success Question If infidelity enters your life will you do love well enough not to let it destroy anything really valuable to your heart?
