…This is an Important Message for Your Cheating Heart
Temptation is everywhere and we’re all only human. The trick with a romantic relationship, however, is to control those temptations, out of love for your partner and for the benefit of your relationship.
Cheating on Him
Whether you’ve already cheated on your man or you’re just thinking about it, it’s not too late to save you’re relationship.
Chances are, if you’ve had an affair (or are seriously considering it), you’re feeling emotionally distant from your man. Disconnected. The “other man” then (whether real or only fictitious right now) is merely filling that emotional void.
But neither he nor your boyfriend should be filling any emotional voids in your life. That’s not the purpose of a relationship (at least not a healthy one with any sort of future in it). You need to fill those voids yourself, provide your own emotional fulfillment, without relying on any man to do it for you. That’s the only way you’ll ever have anything of value to bring to this or any relationship. Otherwise you’re just using the men in your life to give you something you feel incapable of giving yourself. That’s a sure recipe for unending disaster.
The thing to remember, whether you’ve already cheated on him or you’re only just thinking about it, is that the grass is only greener on the other side of the mountain until you get there. Then it suddenly does it seem as green as it did before, and in fact, before you know it, the side you just came from starts to look better and better.
Ask yourself – what are you giving up by placing your relationship in jeopardy? Is it worth it?
Don’t worry as much about whether or not he’ll forgive you. Most men will get over it, even if they’re a bit perturbed at first. The thing is to give him the benefit of the doubt. If you despair that you can’t even talk to him about it, then you might as well throw in the towel now (as all this sneaking around is surely killing you). But if you love him and want it to work, then your bigger risk is in not fessing up and facing the consequences.
Cheating on You
Now to look at the flip-side of the equation: what if it’s not you doing the cheating, but him? What if you’re the one being cheated on? Or perhaps even more agonizing still, what if you suspect him of cheating on you but just don’t know for sure?
On a practical level, you could have him followed, or use an online service to track his phone calls. But a more mature and healthful approach would be to voice your concerns. Let him know that you care about him and certain signals you’ve been getting from him have been leading you to believe that you might be losing him.
Infatuation is not love. Infatuation takes you over; love takes work. And when someone – man or woman – seeks out an affair, rather than do what’s necessary to make it work with the person they’re with, it’s usually because they’re seeking a quick and easy way out. Out from what? From intimacy, and all it requires to develop and grow. Infatuation only takes one person. Intimacy takes two.
So the first thing to do if your lover is cheating on you is to accept that you too bear some part of the burden of responsibility for the gap in intimacy between you. Identifying where and how you’ve contributed to that is your ticket to closing that gap, building (or rebuilding) that bridge of intimacy between you, and turning you into the more appealing and rewarding option in his eyes.
Because men crave intimacy too. Even more than short-lived infatuation.
Equal Opportunity Solutions
Whomever’s doing the cheating, if you both desire to remedy the situation and rebuild the love and trust between you, it may require the outside assistance of a trained relationship counselor. Don’t poo-poo this idea off the bat (and don’t let him do it either). A counselor is confidential and, believe you men, has seen and heard it all before. Sometimes all it takes is an educated outside perspective in order to put you both on the right track to reconnecting and recommitting to one another.
It’s often a very simple miscommunication that, left untended, festers in a downward spiral until one or the other of you is driven to take action. For example, maybe you had to pull back from him somewhat (quite validly and understandably) when you took on this new, more demanding job. Through no fault of either of you, this could easily have led your husband to feel ignored, left out, hurt, fill-in-the-blank…causing him to pull back from you even more than you had from him. Then began a vicious cycle of each of you in turn feeling unfulfilled by the other person and pulling back progressively more and more.
The thing is, if you had been able to broach the sensitive subject of the growing imbalance in your work and love lives, you could have avoided this whole scenario and maybe even used the situation as an opportunity to bring you closer together instead of further apart. (because, when you think about it, discovering that your lover pulled back from you because he felt jilted by you pulling back from him is kind of sweet, in a lovesick sort of you).
Luckily, it’s not too late to do that. Just blamelessly trace the disconnect back to its source and deal with that, rather than attempting to (or avoiding) dealing with the disaster that trigger has blown up into. And to be blatantly clear about it, the key word in all that is “blamelessly”. Taking responsibility for what occurred in your relationship gives you the power to mend it.
Remember – there’s two sides to each and every story. And the truth of any situation between two people typically lies somewhere in the middle. Whether you’re the one having the affair or he’s the one cheating on you, saving the relationship is completely doable – provided it’s what both of you want.
And if it’s not, then be grateful for the opportunity to get out now and move on with your life. Because you deserve to be happy. Both of you.
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