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Fidelity
Infidelity: How "My Marriage Made Me Do It" is a Cop-out
By Dr. Robert Huizenga
Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may
hear something like this: I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is
dead.
There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone.
We’ve grown apart. I can’t stand the marriage. There was nothing
happening in the marriage and the affair just happened.
These statements are rationalizations and fail to get at the
underlying issues.
Key points:
1. It’s as if a marriage is an animal gone bad.
A marriage does not have a life of it’s own. In reality, there is no
such thing as a marriage. One is married as a result of making some
promises and signing a paper at one point.
After the paper is signed, two people continue communicating and acting
toward one another in particular ways that they hope will help them
get what they individually want.
Just as there is no marriage, there is no such thing as a
relationship. There are, however, ways of relating for which each
person is responsible. Remember the comedian Flip Wilson (that dates
me) and his The devil made me do it skit?
2. We idealize marriage or romantic relationships with the
expectation we will get what we want, without much effort to boot.
The movies, popular public press and romance novels/stories don’t
help much here. A marriage is behind the eight ball from the word
go. IT can’t win.
3. From day one most of us don’t have a clue about how to get,
build, nurture and maintain healthy and intimate ways of relating.
We need ‘love 101’ and it’s not there. We rely upon experimentation
or bad models.
4. If the marriage is dead, why in the world would one choose
to have an affair?
Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It really is
stupid. You add a whole layer of deceit and shame that eventually
will result in consequences more dire than approaching your spouse
and saying, I’m really unhappy.
What I’m doing with you obviously is not working. I want out. Oh
well, maybe some people need more problems and suffering.
5. If the marriage is bad, obviously, I don’t have to look at
me.
I can blame it or the other. Some of us find it difficult to look at me.
Some of us don’t know how to look at me. Some of us never think of
looking at me.
Tip: If your partner/spouse is having an affair and blames it on
the marriage, don’t buy into it. The marriage is not the problem.
You are not the problem. Your spouse/partner chose the affair out of
ignorance, fear or inadequacy.
The My Marriage Made Me Do It is just one of 7 affairs outlined
in my E-book, Break Free From the Affair. For more information on
the issues behind the other kinds of affairs and tips for dealing
with them, go to:
http://www.break-free-from-the-affair.com
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