I think this should be our credo in relationships. Human beings should treat one another with respect, compassion, empathy, and loving kindness. We can apply this credo in all our relationships: friends, siblings, parents, neighbours, spouses and children. We can apply this to politics and international relations.
I am going to apply it to ending a marriage or long term relationship. This post is about affairs. I am writing this because the affairs I have been witness to continue to cause damage and pain for people I love.
I have seen the agony (I don’t use the word lightly) that affairs have caused people in my life. I can’t go into details about many of them because they are not my story to tell.
I watched my sister fighting cancer. While she was undergoing treatment she was in the throes of agonizing over her husband’s multiple affairs. She was tortured by it, tortured. His affair and the betrayal occupied her mind much of the time, at a time that she should have been focusing positive energy and healing. His actions caused her so much pain. It seems so unkind and unnecessary to cause someone that kind of pain.
A particularly inappropriate, creepy (almost pedophilia, IMO), affair and subsequent relationship destroyed the bond between two sisters in my family. The same affair will likely have long lasting effects on the child of one of the perpetrators, but he lives in denial about it.
Also in my family, an affair and subsequent relationship wreaked havoc on the psyche’s of two young girls. The affair went from infatuation, to tempestuousness to violence – before breaking up.
I’m leaving out an affair that had a huge impact on me, and one of the people closest to me, so that I don’t cause emotional harm in writing about it. (It did not involve my marriage or any previous relationships).
I know there are shades of grey but I don’t understand why, at a MINIMUM, people can’t exit one relationship before they begin another. Particularly when there are children involved. Sometime, I think a parent should put their child’s needs first, especially when their actions can cause long lasting psychological and emotional damage to partners and children. I will exclude people who are in abusive relationships from this statement.
It seems like affairs are happening everywhere. It’s almost the norm. And people seem to accept it. Am I being old fashioned? Am I a hard ass?
Above all, do no harm.
Amazing. You thoughtfully articulated all I could ever want to say about what affairs do to an entire FAMILY, not to mention a MARRIAGE.
My family was ripped apart by my bio-father’s multiple affairs. I was young and I still remember everything, even the parts my mom tried desperately to shelter me from. I don’t see him any more, and don’t really care to.
Not old fashioned. Plain, common sense that doesn’t seem to be so common anymore.
That’s how my parents marriage ended after 34 years of marriage.
It did much harm to all involved.
It ruined a future that my parents had spent 35 years building.
They should be travelling the world and enjoying a well deserved retirement. Instead, my mother is cleaning other people’s homes so she can live a decent life.
My dad’s life is now very lonely and full of regret.
Erin – I could not agree MORE! My husband and I talk about this a lot and are absolutely shocked by people’s actions sometimes. People we know. We have a pact to leave or deal with each other first if ever we feel that we want to be with someone else. But one thing I have learned, you just don’t know until you are in those shoes.
Hugs and kisses to you.