Dealing With Your Own Infidelity

Posted on April 7th, 2008 by Guy Lewis

Dealing With Your Own Infidelity

We are not all perfect, we make mistakes. Discoveraid is not just about helping people to deal with their partner’s midlife crisis, their depression or their infidelity, its about helping those who also have these issues try to deal with them too.

Seeking out new relationships is a call to be free, it’s a call of desire, the excitement of a new relationship, something tabu, something that makes you feel great and wanted again when your own relationship has lost its meaning. Maybe for you, its a call to be young again or complete those things that you didn’t achieve when you were younger and less experienced.

Infidelity can also be about abandoning all that you have and the burden of responsibilities that may come with them, in favour of someone else that meets your needs, as you see them today. Who knows if this relationship is going to last or not, you are drawn into it like a drug and now is not the time to know how long it will last, its time to enjoy it and forget about the future and forget about the consequences to anyone else.

But like any merry-go-round, you have to accept there is a time to get off and address reality and day to day living with how this affects all those around you . If you are still in a marriage you will have some arranging to do and some explaining. At some time although you will possibly want to avoid this.

So Is This OK? Can I Do This And Feel My Reasons Are Understood?

If is understandable but it isn’t a good place to be. Eventually your world will crash around you and all those who care for you will be very hurt. If hurting others doesn’t bother you, or you feel they deserve it, then I guess you are ok. For now. However you might grow to regret your treatment of others who cared for you later in life.

Take some time to consider your own honour. A marriage is about two people’s trust and integrity to live together for the harmony of both. If that is not what you have experienced then you will be more motivated than most to look elsewhere for a relationship. Either way you have a choice about how to deal with your marriage or relationship you have today and how you deal with it will be seen by those who want to be with you as a sign of how they will be treated. Just because you have not been treated with honour doesn’t mean you need to choose a dishonourable way to finish your relationship. You do have a choice.

Typically people who have had an affair and are looking to break up their existing relationship do a number of things. They either present to their partner disillusionment about the relationship with the intent to gradually break-up with no intention of trying to make up and resolve any issues. In this way they can hide (or so they think) the other relationship they have been having until a time when their relationship is finished and then announce the ‘new’ relationship. I know a few who have tried this and typically it fails abysmally. It is almost an insult to try this because it is so obvious. Don’t try it. Be honest. Be clear to your partner unless they are violent or abusive themselves. If they are you have every reason to hide your feelings and you should focus on removing yourself from your relationship as soon as you can. But consider that you shouldn’t be looking for the weight of another relationship to get you away, that will, in many circumstances be too much for your new partner and ultimately break the new relationship too. Consider getting yourself good counselling support that will raise your self-esteem so that you can feel confident enough to break-up without seeking a refuge first.

Others don’t even try to break up. They continue living with their partner because they enjoy the comfort their partner brings in terms of home life and financial security. They open themselves up to being found out and the consequences of that can be quite dramatic as you may well imagine.

Both the above ways show no honour or respect for anyone else affected by their infidelity. Both are selfish and show a raised level of narcissism within their behaviour.

Its hard once a person is intoxicated by the thrill of a new love (if love has anything to do with it) to consider others, and to consider the hard choices of life or even to attempt to do the right thing because of the destruction that will cause to them selves.

Walk away from the relationship with honour and your integrity intact. This way you will not think back in say twenty years time and think how you let everyone down, how you failed your children, how you failed your husband or wife who didn’t really deserve being treated that way, as much as you will be able to bring up so many good reasons why they deserved it.

Choose to break up your relationship the way you feel is the best for all. Be clear about your plans before you announce your intentions and then clearly announce them. Don’t consider another relationship seriously until you have broken up and cut all the threads of your previous relationship, there will be much to undo and if left, or too early, will affect any incoming relationship negatively.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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