Dealing with Adultery

[EvilEvilKitten]

The trouble is that now this notion of exclusivity has trickled down to DATING and many people assume that you should only date one person at a time; not because they've given any thought to the issue but because they assumed that is how dating is done or that is how they, or their parents, did it. They think that playing the field is wrong - for some reason. So you see those who are dating accusing their partners of cheating and so on as if they were married already.

If love and sex went together then all prostitutes would be married to loving spouses. Face it - you don't even have to like the other person to have sex with them. Some people cannot even remember what their 'lover's' face look like or even remember his/her name. For you, it may seem different but love is not sex and sex is not love. Consider that you love your parents and your children. You may even love your dog. But you're not having sex with any of them!


USAF; not the Navy.

[KissMeHard]

Wonderful EEK, simple and to the point! Most of the time, a divorce comes from a lack of compatibility, ego, and security issues. I definitely agree that if there is no love in the marriage, than don't stay, as painful as the experience is the long term situation will eventually become unbearable for both individuals. It is sad to say, but we as a society, have become fixated on the old standards of fidelity. We worry about the perceptions that others will have of us as a whole. It seems that everyones view of marriage is different and mostly relies on how the individual was raised.

[stallion51]

I would still love my husband but I would divorce him without hesitation. I have been cheating on by a boyfriend and I remember that pain. I will not go through it again.

[EvilEvilKitten]

"I would still love my husband" - no, you wouldn't because you don't love him now - face it - your motto is "Spare me pain".

You're also holding your husband hostage for something some other guy did a long time ago.

Does that sound like LOVE to you?

[usmc8706]

I pray that never happens but if it did i would still love him, he's the man i chose to marry and spend the rest of my life with and that's what i intend to do, he's also the father of my children and my best friend. I would insist on marriage counseling to find out why he had to resort to that, I don't believe people just cheat, there has to be an underlying issue whether it's conscious or subconscious. but i do believe a couple can get past an act of infidelity if they truly love each other.

[EvilEvilKitten]

So you would want to know why - no matter what his answer might be? Good for you! It is always best to face up to issues.

[usmc8706]

Yes I would want to know why, exactly why to best of his ability to explain. Because without the truth there's really no way to move forward and fix our marriage and prevent it from happening again.

[ser_55555]

In my 'not at all humble opinion' - men and women should both just get over it.

I can understand that committing adultery is 'simply' an act of having sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse, and that it would probably actually be the best thing to do, if love still exists in the relationship.

However, this is often much easier said than done. Although some may have the amazing capacity to separate their sexual relationship from their emotional relationship (their love for one another), many others find this to be rather difficult since many feel very intimate, and therefore emotionally close, when being sexually intimate. And this can often be what makes letting go of this issue so hard, since the partner that has been cheated on is probably more concerned with what initiated this affair in the first place than with the action itself; he/she may feel that it is the emotional part of their relationship that is in peril and not the sexual one.

So, how can one learn to just get over it, without feeling any loss of connection in the relationship?

[EvilEvilKitten]

No one ever said that "getting over it" was going to be easy. In fact whether you can or cannot depends entirely upon the strength of the bond between you. No one is disputing that there is a difference between sex for fun adn sex with someone you love and it is within that difference that understanding and forgiveness lies.

Once you grasp love versus pride and fun versus love then the marriage is saved.

Hopefully the marriage will be improved through greater understanding and appreciation but this cannot be guaranteed.

The "loss of connection" is your own insecurity speaking and to solve that you have to face up to and conquer your own fears.

[ser_55555]

Once you grasp love versus pride and fun versus love then the marriage is saved.

Yes, that's a rather good point... It's pretty obvious, and yet, this can be forgotten...

The "loss of connection" is your own insecurity speaking and to solve that you have to face up to and conquer your own fears.

Well, although I can understand how it is one's insecurity, is it possible that maybe that insecurity felt is justified if, say, the affair seems more 'emotional' rather than 'sexual'?