Adultery and Cheating - Relationships part 5

Long time no blog entry - life went through another hectic period.

Anyway - adultery and cheating....

Here’s the thing:

You fall in love (hopefully) and you decide to marry/live together (maybe/eventually).
From then on it’s up to both of you. You can feed the relationship and make it grow, or you can starve it so that it withers and even dies.


Now I’m going to say something contentious:
If one partner decides to cheat – BOTH ARE RESPONSIBLE!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending cheaters – they are self-centred bastards(esses).
They hurt their partner, any children they have, the other woman/man, and the other woman/man’s partner/children. ALWAYS!
They try to justify this with self-deceptions and lies.
They do this because they are too dumb/weak/selfish to undo the damage they have already done to their existing relationship.
They figure the rule “close one door before you open another” doesn’t apply to them.

Even if they want to repent, they have created damage that will take a long time (if ever) to repair – whether or not the partner accepts their repentance.


So, having said that, why do I also put responsibility on the cheated partner?
Simply put, the partner has, either consciously or otherwise, kept their eyes and ears shut - because:

1. There are ALWAYS signs that a partner is willing to become open to someone else.
2. There are ALWAYS existing problems that are leading up to a partner cheating.
3. There are ALWAYS signs when a partner is starting to cheat.

They did nothing about any of this.
And “I’m scared I might lose him/her”, “I daren’t risk breaking up the relationship”, “but I love him/her” are crap excuses.
Doing nothing about those signs is condemning you both to a crap life together.

I am not saying dual culpability excuses a cheater, but the one being cheated must realise the part they played – else they will both continue making the same mistakes and/or potentially become very bitter.

No 2 above will probably need explaining most. What are those existing problems?

Top of the list, Number 1, is lousy communication: -

Are you both really, genuinely happy with the relationship?
Are you BOTH feeding it?
Do you both remember why you got together, what you loved/valued in each other?
Do you both really listen to each other?
Are one or both of you allowing other people, other stresses, other considerations interfere with the relationship?
The list goes on, but those are good starters.

Number 2 on the list: -
were you really compatible in the first place? If serious incompatibilities developed, did you take note and face them?

Number 3: -
Did you define boundaries, set the correct level of expectations, ensure they were agreed upon, and enforce them?
*NOTE: Ignoring something is actually condoning it, saying it is OK.

Very few of us had good training or found a good understanding of what makes a relationship work. Many take self-help books/guides, Guru quotes, Conventional Wisdoms and/or Myths as a supposed great guide. They seek to fit someone else’s template. Very few realise that what makes a great relationship is specific to the two people involved, not what works for others.
And it has to work for both, all the time!

Adultery is a symptom and not a cause, and both partners are culpable.