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Extramarital Affairs and Divorce
You need to be in love with someone in order to spend your life with the person and you need to feel a sense of commitment so that you can be honest to your partner and your relationship. In addition, you need to respect your partner and be respected in return so that you can be lifelong companions and not just a husband and a wife. Lastly but most importantly, you should be able to trust your partner. When there is lack of trust, commitment, respect or love, the ground is ripe for an extramarital affair.
Why Do Extramarital Affairs Occur in a Marriage?
Most people want to believe that extramarital affairs happen when a relationship has a problem. However, that is not entirely true. While it is true that some people get drawn to people other than their partner when their marriage is on the rocks, there are times when people indulge in extramarital affairs because they do not seem to see any harm in it. Therefore, lack of commitment or character can make a person indulge in extramarital affair.
There are times when two people get married too soon without realising that they are actually not right for each other. There may be temperamental or other differences that lead to constant fights or arguments in the house. In such cases, a person may be pushed into seeking comfort elsewhere. While this is not the ideal solution to solve the marital problem, some people do opt for it.
Let us not forget the individualistic pleasures that the society of today encourages us to indulge in. The society that we live in lays a huge emphasis on personal happiness and self-gratification. This thought has got so ingrained in people’s mind that they do not want to deal with any kind of unhappiness in a marriage. Therefore, people tend to run away to the first person that helps them take their mind off this unhappiness. In order to gain momentary happiness, people tend to sacrifice a lifetime of smiles and bliss.
Why Are So Few Marriages Able to Survive Extramarital Affairs?
A close friend of mine started getting strange vibes from her husband after three years of marriage; he was coming home late, showed no interest in her or their one-year old daughter, and was frequently making travel trips. She started asking him casually if something was wrong but he always brushed off the subject.
One day she found lipstick stains on his shirt. Furious, she confronted him while showing him the shirt and demanding an explanation. To her surprise, he blatantly ignored her and told her that it was a figment of her imagination. Her husband never accepted the fact that he was having an extramarital affair and continued his relations with the other woman. Therefore, situations involving extramarital affairs can be complicated.
Not every married person involved in the affair is willing to end the affair because chances are that he or she has gone too far with the other person. In such situations, it becomes very hard for the non-cheating spouse to stay in the marriage.
When you marry someone, you imagine the two of you are for each other and with each other all the time. Therefore, it becomes very hard to imagine someone you love in the arms of another man or woman. It becomes very hard for the cheated spouses to take back their cheating spouses because there is a loss of trust. In addition, there is a fear in the mind of the cheated spouse that such an incident might happen again.
While the cheating spouse can assure his or her partner that it will never happen again, the other spouse never feels absolutely secure in the marriage. For this reason, very few marriages are able to survive extramarital affairs. Even when a marriage survives an extramarital affair, it may never go back to what it used to be before the affair.
Tips for Saving a Marriage Hit by an Extramarital Affair
Communicate with your spouse. This advice holds true for the cheating as well as the cheated spouse. It is important to understand why your marriage is going through such a crisis. Address the underlying problems in your marriage.
Rebuild the trust. This is probably the toughest part to deal with once the couples decide to move on with their marriage. Rebuilding trust requires a lot of time, effort, and patience.
Seek professional help if you are unable to deal with all your issues on your own. Professional therapists are able to give helpful insights that can be useful in rebuilding a relationship.
