How to handle infidelity in marriage?

‘It is important to set proper boundaries in your outside relationships for the purpose of protecting your primary relationship from emotional promiscuity. We often think of infidelity as a physical act when the truth is it started as a breach of emotional monogamy.’- Jordan Blake Michiels.

Loyalty is an ingredient that makes you trust your spouse. When there is even an iota of mistrust in your relationship it is as though you are living in a furnace of doubts and suspicion. You cannot keep checking on the whereabouts of your spouse with distrust, can you? When your spouse says that he\she will be late from work, you should have that much of trust in him\her to know that he\she will be in the work place only.

Suppose you are suspicious, what will you do? You walk around the house breaking your head whether your spouse is really working, or whether he\she is on a sly visit somewhere else. You start up a fierce argument when your spouse returns and the result are resentment and bitterness. What makes you doubt your spouse? When your spouse cheats, there are tell tale signs which send out warning signals.

What are the signs that make you suspicious of your spouse?

1. The sudden eagerness in dressing to look different and attractive.
2. The indifference towards you.
3. Always talking in the mobile in low tones.
4. Wanting to sleep alone.
5. Comes late from work regularly and gives feeble reasons.
6. Ridiculing your appearance and the way you look or behave.

Why do couples want to cheat?

1. You are attracted to the person.
2. You work in close proximity and enjoy the company of each other.
3. He\she is appreciative while your spouse is not.
4. He\she shows willingness to listen to you which your spouse does not do.
5. You both strike an emotional chord.

What are the repercussions of cheating?

1. You always fight with your spouse.
2. You stop caring for the family.
3. Your children are an agonized spectator to the squabbles you have with your spouse.
4. You destroy your family life for something which has no longevity or stability .
5. Your marriage might end in divorce.

It is never your intention to be disloyal to your spouse. If so, you would not have married him\her, would you? You enter into a marriage bond with a sincere intention of making it work. You have great expectations about your spouse. You visualize your married life to be rosy and full of love days.

But you are in for a shock when you begin your life together. The expectations you had about your spouse is crumbled to pieces and you find it difficult to survive in a married life which has lost its glory for you. Your dream becomes a pipe dream and it is as though you had married a new person.

The lame excuses given for infidelity

1. He\she does not listen to me.
2. He\she is always preoccupied with something and does not even interact with me.
3. He\she never shows love.
4. His\her interests are so diversified from mine.
5. He\she is no more physically attractive to me.

The excuses given looks rather immature, don’t you feel so? Trust and loyalty are very important for your marriage to survive. Few years back, infidelity was always linked with men and it was assumed that women were always loyal. But with modernity coming into marriage, the ratio of cheating is even between men and women.

Physical attraction forms the major cause for cheating. For how long will you be physically infatuated towards the person? Might be for a few days or even for a few months! Then you get used to it and you wonder why you cheated your spouse for such a temporary feeling.

You say that you feel emotionally deprived. You do not make efforts to rectify it and let things drift apart in your married life. But when someone touches that emotional chord it makes you brazen enough to cross the line. Outside-marriage- relationship will always be temporary and fickle. When you overcome your emotional and physical need, your immediate thought is your family, but the harm has already been done.

‘If you cheat on someone who is willing to do anything for you, you actually cheated yourself out of true loyalty.’- Unknown

When you are focused on making your marriage work, you will be able to be content with your spouse. When you keep on expecting something from your spouse, you will always be disappointed. You don’t keep changing your parents, do you? Till the day you live you love the same parent without being bored. But strange you get bored by your spouse. When loyalty enters into your marriage, it becomes easy for to love your spouse for what he\she is and your mind never strays.