Dealing with Adultery

[nuttychick]

4 of my clients in the last week have reached major milestones with their
husbands..... 63 years married.. 55 years.. 60 years and 50 years...


I live in a small town and with out fail every week in our local paper
there is an article on couples who are having anniversaries over 50 years

I would delve deeper into the statistics of my countries marriage/divorce rate
but thats just plain boring and stupid..

Statistics say that I have a 1 in 30 chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident..... Do you think I should walk everywhere.... oh damn didnt I
read somewhere that there is a chance of being run over by a car?

Pfft Statistics ... if we let them rule our lives then we might as well
stay wrapped up in cotton wool and stay at home and live a very lonely life...

[EastTexasDude]

Ok here's my first post and boy did I pick one to jump in on. So far I have seen where some think having sex with someone other than your spouse is no big deal. I've seen post saying we don't stay together for love but for property gains instead.
I have been married for 25 years and I can say I love my wife more today than I did last year. Every year my love for her grows stronger. We have never really had that great of a sex life, even though I wish we did, but that has never effected my love for her. I didn't marry my wife for the sex but instead for the companionship, friendship, support, the joy of knowing I have someone who will be there for me when I really need them. This sounds like a best friend and yes she is my best friend. We are best friends who tust each other with our deepest darkest secrets that we would never tell anyone else. At the same time we both feel warmth and security form the other. We know that when the world has us down the she will be there to help pick us up and stay by our side to see us through whatever the situation is. When you truely are in love with your spouse you know it's you two against the world and your better half will fight by your side to the end. Being married and in love is knowing that if you have had a bad day your spouse will let you rant and rave and never ignore you. It's knowing that when you make a mistake you can confess to it and they will forgive you and still love you unconditionally.
Someone asked why commiting aultry is such a big deal. Well a marriage is based on trust. I you do not trust your spouse or they do not trust you then you will never have that special bond all married couples should have. When you place that much trust in a person and they commit adultry with another person the trust is broken, but not destroyed if you truely love your spouse. Haveing a spouse cheat is painfull and it leaves deep wounds but as with any wound it can heal, the process isn't easy but it can be done. But to heal both people need to be open and honest. The one that cheated needs to confess they cheated, try to explain what drove them to do it and they need to decide if they are really with the right person. They also need to be willing to take what thier spouse has to say. The other needs to explain how much it hurt them and how the trust has been broken. The one cheated on may need to talk about it on and off for months to help the healing. They may need to cry or be angry or most likely both and the othe needs to put up with it and ask forgiveness. But at the same time the cheated on needs to be willing to give forgiveness. If the couple is truely in love there should be able to forgive the one they love.
Cheating hurts the trust but it also hurts self respect and ego. Ego is so easily hurt and so hard to repair. The one cheated on starts to wonder whats wrong with them to cause the person they love to turn to someone else. Does their partner really love them, are they that bad in bed? a lot of times it has nothing to do with either of these things but instead a lack of intamacy and communication. Sex between a married couple is something very special that they share and nobody else can experiance it. It's like a holly temple and when another man or woman steps in it is soiled.
i don't know if any of this makes any sence but it's hard to explain why sex is so protected between a married couple that truely love each other. I guess part of it is because when you take your wedding vows you promise to remain loyal to that person and when you break that it shows disrespect and dishonor to the other, something a marriage needs to survive especially in today world.
Ok I'm off my soap box now, sorry for all the rambling on.

[EvilEvilKitten]

So you're saying that IN SPITE of all of the loyalty, love, understanding, companionship that your wife gives you on a constant basis and that special bond you share - one little fling would be enough to destroy ALL of that?
And after 25 years, one little fling would destroy the trust built up between you two. Interesting. Why is that?

Ah! Now we come to it - ego. Adultery hurts because the 'wounded' partner's ego leads them to question their own self-worth as a sexual partner.

Well, maybe you aren't all that good and maybe you are and just maybe the infidelity had nothing to do with you but was a personal failure of your spouse's or a change in your spouse's perspective. But if you play the victim, you will never know.

Perhaps it was their "avoiding wounding your ego" that kept your spouse's mouth shut in the first place. Rather than addressing an issue to you - he/she 'consulted' someone else. I know you're going to accuse me of blaming the victim but in reality - it happens.

She doesn't want sex for whatever reason, refuses to address the issue, he cheats, and she gets all upset - how many times have we heard it? The initial failure was her refusal to address the issue and seek some sort of a compromise. In the absence of her effort, using the above example, she has no right to play the victim now beyond regretting that her husband was human and therefore frail. The husband's infidelity was the second and subsequent failure - not the primary or casual failure. (Change the genders in the example to suit your needs.)

Nothing happens in isolation in a marriage.

Instead of worrying about your precious ego, search for and then fix the causes and stop worrying about the symptoms; adultery is a symptom - not a cause.

[EastTexasDude]

I'm not sure if you understood what I posted or not. I can not say what would happen to my marriage if my wife had an affair. I would like to think we would be able to work through it and salvage our marriage, I do know we would try. Yes the trust in our marriage would be damaged, but I said damaged not destroyed. You asked why a little fling would destroy it? Because we both took vows to honor, love and obey each other and having an affair is not living up to those vows. I trust my wife to be faithful to me just as I am to her. Whatever her or my reason would be for having an affair it would not make it right and would be a show of disrespect for the other. If one of us had an affair what is to say we wouldn't do it again and whats to say we hadn't done it before but just didn't get cought? If I were to have an affair I would expect my wife to lose some of her trust for me and I would have to work to earn it back. I don't know, maybe I'm just old fashioned but I don't see adultry as something to be taken lightly. When me and my wife took those vows we were giving the other our word we would remain faithful and I take that seriously.

I have no idea what your saying about the ego part. We all have them including yourself. An ego can be a helpful thing or it can destroy you. You have the find the balnce where you control your ego instead of it controlling you. It doesn't matter how you word it adultry is wrong. The main cause of most affairs is the lack of communication between a husband and wife. When we first got married niether of us wanted to hurt the other so we tip toed around conflict. Well that lasted about one year. We have our fights now but we never get nasty or say hurtful things to the other, there's no need to because you can always word things in a way not to be hurtful. I wouldn't even want to guess the number of arguments we have had in our 25 years together but I can say we always worked through them, and that bull about not going to sleep until the disagreement is settled, ha! Some of our disagreements went on for months befroe we came to an agreement but we never let it effect our feelings for the other.

Your last statement says adultry is a symptom not a cause. I disagree strongly. Adultry is a choice. The one that has the affair made the choice to cheat and whatever excuse they use to justify it is just that, an excuse. They could have at anytime ended the marriage, they could have sat down and talked to their partner, or they could have looked for counseling but when they let their hormons take over they made a choice to not think about their partners feelings or they just didn't care about them.

I am proud to say that in our 25 years of marraige neither me nor my wife have had an affair or even wanted to. I'm sure some will find that hard to believe but it is possible. And no I would not throw my marriage away if my wife did have an affair. I would do everything in my power to try and repair our marriage and hopefully put it all behind us. But I also know that it would be a long rough road for both of us. If you love your spouse your willing to take the rough road if thats what is needed.

Just out of curiousity are you married Kitten? I don't mean that in any to start something. I'm just curious because of some of your statements so please don't take it as being disrespectful.

[oaktree]

I with Easttexasdude 100%. Everything you state about you, your wife and marriage is exactly how i feel too and my marriage.
I have been married for 9 years but together 14 years. I love my wife even more then the first year we been together. she is my best friend and only friend i ever had for this long. she knows everything about me (learning disability, hepities C, Depression) and love me for who i am.
I confronted her one night worries sick that she may be cheating on me. It tore her apart that i was thinking about it but knowing how she responded told me she will never do that. Sorry that i even said anything. However, when it comes to her cheating on me, my love for her would dissolve. The way i see it, if you are having sex with another outside the marriage you are talking the love with you to another. Some of you see love and sex as a separated thing, I don’t. If you are going to have sex with somebody there has to be some kind of emotion with it.

[EvilEvilKitten]

I have been gleefully married to the best man on earth for more than 30 years. We will remain married until we die. Nothing will change that. In the face of our committment to eachother, the odd affair/fling here and there is not at all important. We are both retired military and have faced the prospect of losing our beloved to enemy action. His words are consistent: "She has to come back. I'm too old to date." I have to admit that I'd miss him very much.

In the face of death, the extinction of your beloved, the literal blasting into oblivion and the picking up of body parts of your future together - how could mere adultery ever matter?

Imagine it. Sit in the dark some night playing Beethoven's Funeral March and live the 'identified only by DNA, closed coffin' end of your marriage. Then try to tell me that having some fling is of any importance.

We lived with that fear for 20 years. I am not going to cave and neither is he just because some 'mid-life Barbie/Ken' came along.

The point about ego is that your identity, your self-worth has to come from WITHIN yourself and can not depend upon others OUTSIDE of yourself. My husband's ego does not need me. My ego does not need him. We are not two wrecks frantically clinging onto eachother, needing the other to complete ourselves, but two strong individuals who choose to remain together sharing our lives because we are happiest together.

[oaktree]

well said EvilEvilKitten. and may i say thank you both you and your hubby for defending this country. <s>

[EastTexasDude]

Thats great Kitten. Which branch were you in, former Army here. Spent most of my time stationed at Fort Benning. Retired five years ago.

I'm not saying your point of view is wrong for you, but it's not for me. I was put in danger more times than I care to count and a few of those times I really didn't know if I was going to make it out in the verticle position. All those time did make me appreciate my wife even more but they also drove me to be even more loyal and faithful to her and she says they did the same for her. For me having sex with someone else would cheapen my realationship with my wife. It would make me feel as though I was being disrespectful to her. I value our intamacy and feel that we are not to share it with anyone else just as our vows stated. For one of us to have an affair would be the same as saying the vows meant nothing. Now that doesn't mean you have to see it the same way, to each his own. The topic came up and I posted my thoughts and feelings on the subject.

Congrats on staying married as long as you have. In todays sociaty that is a true accomplisment. To many people throw up their hands and call it quits when the going gets tough.

[EvilEvilKitten]

Now if only everyone would respect the 'to each his/her own' then all would be well - but - doesn't seem to be happening.

You're welcome.

[EastTexasDude]

Well you just have to ignore the ones you don't agree with. Listen to what they have to say and take what you find usefull and dispose of the rest. I've ,et a lot of people who I thought were really screwed up in the head bit I actually learned a few things from them, heard a lot of stuff I didn't care for also, but just took what I liked and ignored the rest. You said you had been in the military also, then you know you meet people from all kinds of backgrounds and you really have no choice but to get along with each other. I had some above and below me in rank that I really didn't care for their view on life but I had to work with them and put my personal opinion aside. I have my views and beliefs and for me to have the right to hve them I have to understand other people are allowed theirs also. Even if I am the one who is right . j/k there.

Hey you never dod say which branch you were in, for some reason I'm guessing Navy?