Love hurts-and so does betrayal.
Author | Whitehall, Ketima |
Position | Psychology |
NOEL BIDERMAN, former CEO of Ashley Madison, the marital affair website, when asked if cheating is bad, answered that "undiscovered cheating is good." Since that website gets more than 1,000,000 hits per day, many people obviously agree with him. I, however, disagree on one point--undiscovered versus discovered cheating.
Cheating is a betrayal of trust no matter how you spin it. Whether it is because your sexual needs are not being met; you feel that you are not being heard and valued; or you generally are unfulfilled and cannot pinpoint a specific reason why, cheating, by definition, breaks the inherent trust of the relationship.
Undiscovered cheating deprives the cheater's partner of the opportunity to work with the cheater to correct whatever issues have thrown the relationship out of kilter. The problems in the relationship do not get addressed because, while one partner is cheating and getting his or her needs met outside of the relationship, the other partner is under the assumption that everything is okay, or at least tolerable enough that no major changes are needed. You will not fix something if you do not know it is broken.
Discovered cheating is a different story, and it is a story that saved my relationship. We had been together for 10 years and were raising two beautiful children. At different times along the way, we experienced the usual ups and downs that all relationships go through, but nothing really serious. However, I began to have a general feeling of dissatisfaction, and I barely could remember that wonderful time-in the past--when we had been intimate, so I tried the "we need to talk about our relationship" route; that got me about as far as a car with a dead battery. Still, I felt the need to find out why my man seemed to be pulling away from me because, although he claimed everything was fine, my intuition was telling me that something was not right.
Believing that trust is a primary component of a healthy relationship, I never had been the type to snoop through his phone, emails, etc, but there obviously was a problem and he would not tell me what it was, so I did not know what else I was supposed to do. My lucky break came one morning when he ran out to the store and forgot to shut down his computer. I looked through his email messages and found numerous notifications from a dating website with subject lines like "We have a new match for you" and "fine young thing wants to connect with you."
Later that morning, I logged onto the dating site. There were tons of men and women on there, interested in everything from casual sex to love and marriage. To my advantage, they had addressed him by his username in the emails, so I knew exactly who to search for. I set up a fake profile on the site and went directly to his page. He indicated that he was looking for friends who liked to have fun and were not afraid to be themselves. I was pretty sure that "friends" meant friends with benefits but, just to be really sure, I sent a request to connect with him.
He accepted my request and we chatted quite a bit by instant message and email over the next few weeks. The topics of conversation ranged from what we did for a living and in our spare time, to what we would do if we ever ended up in bed together. I found out a lot of information about our problems at home that he never would say to my face: I nagged him about trivial things; I talked too much and always pressured him to talk about his feelings; he felt unappreciated and disrespected by me and sometimes by the kids; he was not getting enough sex--and the kicker ... he was not sexually attracted to me anymore because I had gained 40 pounds.
I was devastated. I wanted to blow the lid off the whole thing and let him know it was me he had been chatting with all of this time--and to point out that he no longer was the same size as when we met, either; to confront him about all of the different ways he wanted to please his new Internet friend in the bedroom that he was not doing with me; and to let him know that I also felt unappreciated and taken for granted. Instead, though, I kept my mouth shut about what he had said and played it cool. At least he had made it clear to his Internet buddy that he had no intention of leaving me; he just wanted some sex on the side.
Although I was hurt by what I had learned, I was able to find a silver lining. I now had the information I needed about what he felt was wrong at home, which gave me a starting place for rebuilding what we had lost. Over the next few months I still did many things I probably shouldn't have, because, let's face it, old habits are hard to break, and once the cycle of resentment and criticism settled in, we both pretty much shut down.
I took time out for a pity party and then got to work, reading and learning everything I could about how to fix our broken relationship. I...
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