The gut wrenching fear of knowing or not knowing, the anger and rage of betrayal, the devastation caused. The inability to ever trust a significant other again.
But there’s another side that is not often looked at, and may be unpopular. The truth is, if your cheater didn’t care about you at all, they wouldn’t try to hide an affair. The fact that they go to extreme lengths to keep you from discovering it shows how much they DO care about losing you! I know, it’s an unpopular viewpoint because of the “ownership” we tend to assign ourselves over our significant other, it’s inherent in relationships and in society’s rules.
But if you really could think clearly about what’s going on, you could be very surprised. They usually love you and don’t want to lose you. They usually have some sort of issue with themselves, where they just need more; more love, more romance, more fun; and hope to get it out of their system and get back to their old lives, without you being the wiser.
Sometimes, a relationship is at the breaking point, or so cold or lonely that an affair is the only thing that allows a partner to continue to stay in it. Acting somewhat like the third leg of a stool, propping up a diseased marriage or long term relationship, an affair can be what saves this type of situation. In many cases, this is actually proof of a deep commitment and loyalty to the primary relationship. Rather than leave the spouse, who would be devastated, they get warmth, romance, sex or even just friendship from one another.
The threat comes into play when the warmth and romance become so addicting that the cheater decides they have to leave, almost as a matter of life and death to them; they literally feel they will die if they don’t leave. And in some ways, it’s true. A part of your joyful, innocent and childlike self can die away if it goes too long without the love and nurturing it needs.
The time to fix all this is way before the attraction to another starts. Talking, sharing life’s moments, mutuality and hope, create a strong bond of intimacy and an excitement to move together into the future. This also helps ward off threats from others.
Just remember, all is not lost because someone cheats; if you can use your head instead of your heart, keep your cool and get to the bottom of what ailed the relationship, you can turn it around and come out stronger than you were before. If you can look at the problems and put ownership and pride aside for just a while, if you truly love your cheater, then a new and different, honest relationship is possible, and cheating won’t need to be a part of it.
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