Infidelity is one of the oldest problems that marriages face. Each year a staggering number of husbands and wives are unfaithful to one another, and many jump straight from their marriage into a new relationship with their affair partner. Big mistake. Infidelity is never a good “way out” of marriage for the following reasons.
1. You can lose respect from the people who matter most.
Maybe you have religious family members. Your parents have stayed together for 50 or 60 years. Going against the grain with an affair can cause them to lose respect for you. It can also do the same with you and your children. After all, no one in the world is closer to them than Mom and Dad. When Dad hurts Mom or vice versa, it’s hard for the kids not to take it personally. That’s part of why so many children of divorce struggle in school, work, and relationships, after their parents’ marriage breaks apart. While the affair may be physically exhilarating, it seldom earns the respect of the people who matter most. More often than not, it damages it beyond repair.
2. You can make divorce incredibly difficult on yourself and everyone close to it.
Your spouse, your children, shared friends, close family members — all of these people can be touched by the selfishness of an affair in deeply hurtful ways. While it depends on the circumstances, it usually impacts one or more of these people in a negative way as they struggle to come to terms with the person they thought they knew, and the person who had the affair.
3. You never get a chance to know yourself.
People who jump from one relationship to the next with no “down time” usually end up cheating again and again until they grow to appreciate being alone. If you want to keep hurting people in such a way (or you allow yourself to keep hurting people in such a way), then you probably don’t need to be in a relationship, period.
4. Finally, relationships born in infidelity have a high rate of failure.
The reasoning is clear. You both know how you got together, and once the flutters go away and an actual relationship begins, you’ll start to realize this and question each other more and more. Is she really working late at the office? Are his female co-workers really as “ugly” as he lets on? Mistrust starts when you cheat together and grows under the radar as you ease in to the monotonies of daily life.
Have you ever known a relationship born in infidelity to work? Are you currently going through this from the side of cheater or victim? Share your experiences in the comments section.
My husband cheated on me numerous times and the last time he got busted by my niece. He stood in Walmart and denied knowing me or being married to me. When he came home of course he denied it and said that was a one time thing but from the pic my niece took and sent me I could clearly tell from the body language that was a lie. That was in 2011 when I found this out. He lyingly said he wanted to make our marriage work. He went as far as making our daughter meet this woman and that truly devastated her. Oct 10, 2015 I finally left and once my daughter graduates I intend on filing for a divorce. I took all I could take.
Why’d you stay with him? I just found out that my wife has been having an affair with a coworker. I found out on my own. She lied about this and that. I found out the truth tho. Just don’t know if I can trust her again. How did you get past it?
My husband was never a provider or a protector for his family. We decided to move in with his mother shortly after his step father died. I then became I’ll which lead to loss of my job eventually. Unemployment and food stamp became my main source of income to provide for the children. He became verbally abusive towards me calling me bitch, whore, slut, stupid bitch in the presence of our son and his siblings who were visirong. This mirage was a failure from the beginning and should have never taken place. I have never been so unhappy in my entire life. We got married too young and now I need to run away fast.
Lived in misery and hell far too long.
My husband and I cheated to our previous partners, me to my boyfriend and him to his wife. After his separation from his wife we got together. Everything is great over all, we have fights but we work them out and we are growing together. Eventhough, he has never been happier in his life and neither have I. His last relationship was messy and all he ever received was put downs, which damaged his self esteem so badly to the point he didnt care anymore. Our story is very unusual, most stories like ours dont have a good ending, but this is going really good so far, i guess it all depends on the circumstances. My husband has been hurt so bad in the past, starting from his mother, and then from his ex wife. Like if God told him heres your big break, heres a woman to love you unconditionaly. And i know that God is against adulter, but is something that we have both repented for, to the point that before his divorce i had broken up with him because i ididnt want to have an affair anymore. But then later after the divorce we ended up together again…….its like if we are meant to be. But still, our story is unique, anyone else going through something similar, cheating on their spouse, i dont recomend it, and id say just be honest with your partner, tell them you dont want to be in the relationship instead of cheating. I wish i would have said that to my boyfriend, and my husband to his ex wife, because we caused them pain, wayyy more to his ex wife than my boyfriend, because they have a child together, and because if the pain we caused her now she hates my husband, and she does everything she can to make our lives hard using her child. And it bothers me sooo much, but i have no reason or purpose to get mad because im the one who slept wit her husband and took him away, and i accept her reaction. I just hope that someday she can forgive us, forgive my husband, so that she can heal and move on, shes a beautiful young woman, she doesnt deserve to be bitter for the rest of her life.