Today it's a game of hot pursuit. One partner is cheating, the other feels it's their job to catch them. This game can turn violent or in the least can rob you of your health and sanity.

We call it an Affair, a Fling or a Thing. An affair is: A romantic and sexual relationship, sometimes one of brief duration, between two people who are not married to each other.

Makes it sound kind of non-threatening. Let's bring it into your relationship. Now when one of you has an Affair, a Fling or a Thing outside of your relationship you get a whole different feeling, don't you.

When someone has an affair outside of an already established relationship, we use the word "cheating". In my mind the word "cheating" doesn't do it justice. You can cheat at cards. You can find cheat-codes to enhance your electronic game playing. These things aren't taken seriously at all. You can even cheat on your taxes and people somehow feel that's okay, that you have somehow "won" or beat the system if you get away with it

Instead of "cheating", a more correct term for having a sexual encounter outside of your relationship is infidelity.

Most cultures around the world use the term infidel to describe someone who has been faithless, unfaithful disloyal, practiced treachery or deceit toward, or has betrayed or violated another person.

Many marriages and relationships dissolve because of Infidelity. It's not just the sex with another person, it's the personal betrayal that the innocent mate can't get over. In order to cheat, you have to lie, and fool your partner.

The question is always asked; "How can you say you ever loved me if you are willing to make a fool of me?"

Self-Esteem is destroyed because you feel you weren't enough. Your concept of your relationship is shattered. You believed that you were in a monogamous relationship, you were wrong. You believed that you were both looking for the same future, you weren't.

All of this makes you doubt your own perception of what the truth is. If the person you know better than anybody else can lie to you and you believe them it makes you start to doubt your own ability to tell the difference between the truth and a lie. You start to second-guess yourself.

You're left with a lot of anger at the other person who had such little regard for you and your position in the relationship that they would violate that. The anger toward them is different than the anger you have for your partner. You may never get the opportunity to unload part of your anger.

Then you're left with the anger at your partner, a righteous anger at this person who lied to you, and who disrespected you so much.

This is a big thing to get over, and unless your partner is willing to communicate with you, and give you a place to put all of this pain you may never be able to really get over Infidelity in your relationship.

This is the key to whether or not your relationship can survive an “affair”. Mine did but we couldn't have done it without a certain attitude from both of us.

•  The affair has to stop. Period.

•  The guilty partner has to be willing to give the innocent the space that they need to feel what you feel about this betrayal.

•  The guilty partner must be willing to make him or herself accountable for their behavior. There are no reasons to have an affair, no matter how one rationalizes it to themself. Disloyalty and infidelity are a personal choice.

•  The guilty partner has no right to expect you to forgive and forget. Because even if you can forgive (which means to give as you did before) you will never be able to forget. So your partner has to expect that you will have residual moodiness for a long time maybe years later.

•  The guilty partner has to be willing to help you to build up your self-esteem. After all they helped to destroy it.

•  The guilty partner must be willing to be accountable for their time, and that there may now be certain activities that they will have to give up.

•  Most of all, the guilty partner must be willing to answer all of your questions in an honest and straightforward manner.

•  The guilty partner must be willing to not make excuses for their behavior.

•  The guilty partner must be willing to bare the consequences of their infidelity without complaining.

As you can see, this list makes getting over an act of Infidelity very difficult. But many relationships do. A servey taken of couples who have been through infidelity in their relationship showed that 20% survive this terrible time in their lives. They develop strategies for dealing with the pain and they learn how to move on.

If The guilty partner is unwilling to do the work in order to heal this breech of trust then you will find it very difficult to repair your relationship let alone forgive them.

Remember this: “Your needs are as important as my needs”. The innocent partner can't act selfless and play the myrter; they will be denying your own needs. They will never recover from this if they do. There has to be enough communication between the two of you to know that the innocent partner's needs are going to be met.

If not and if the guilty partner will never give the innocent partner the opportunity to heal this, you should probably consider your relationship DOA.

Remember that when there has been infidelity in a relationship, that eventhough the odds are may be against your relationship surviving, it can be done. it takes courage, humility, commitment, communication from both partner's in order to recover.

When this trust is destroyed it can take a very long time to heal. If you would like Marion and I to help you through these very serious situation, enroll in the Mastering the Art of Therapeutic Dialog™ workshop today.

This article was prepared as supplementary information for the My Relationship Problems.com, relationship evaluation.

 

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