This is a topic that is sure to inspire some pretty emotional opinions. Today we live in a very transitory, materialistic and superficial world. It seems that issues around people’s romantic lives sometimes get so twisted that it’s now basically normal to hear about people cheating on their partners (could that be “normal”?) and people breaking up. It is very sad and sadder for the children who by default are involved in the equation.

Many times I have wondered if there are people who seek “happiness” in the arms of another person, that is, not their partner, and who end up being happy. My experience tells me no. My experience is also somewhat confirmed by some thoughts in the book. Save your marriage before it starts[1] (SIMBIS).

What is also about the pathology of matters? How are people tempted and seduced in the first place? Surely it must start with attraction, and then stimulation, and perhaps all of that is increased by dissatisfaction with the current situation. We can easily see how these things can happen. In fact, the book Your needs, your needs[2] describes these very scenarios, what leads us to them (insofar as our love does not need to be satisfied), and how to straighten them out.

Let’s go back to what SYMBIS says. There is the premise that our identities fit perfectly with our marital relationships.

“As human beings, we create and define ourselves through commitments, and those commitments become an integral part of our identity. When we contradict our commitments, we lose ourselves and suffer an identity crisis,” she says.[3]

That is, we invest a lot of ourselves in a marriage or a de facto relationship. When we bring another party into the mix, we disturb the balance of our souls.

And when we separate, particularly if by virtue of our own choice, we voluntarily configure a possible disenfranchisement of our identities: we end up with an identity crisis; the action we have taken is often not consistent with who we are and the commitments we have made. It’s like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We cannot be ourselves if we discard a key part of ourselves: life does not allow us to be so strange on the level of these things.

I am sure there are many exceptions to the above, but there is also some truth to the fact that while the other grieves over the broken relationship, the one who commits adultery grieves over the loss or lack of personal identity. To tell the truth, both now suffer from identity problems.

The real problem is this. If we select for ourselves a partner that is right for us and, to use a Jim Collins analogy, “is the right bus for us,” why wouldn’t we strive to keep reversing, rekindling, awakening, and reinventing things throughout the future? the years of our lives together? (I guess there are some oversimplifications in this argument.) But to start over is to destroy the soul (if that were possible).

And that is the key: selection. To begin with, many people do not make the right decisions. We are all fallen creatures with many defects. The slightest misjudgment in selection can cause a lifetime of pain (not for one, but for both it seems).

Sex, lies, affairs, and breakups…for the most part they are never good and only cause harm. Breaking a marriage commitment to a spouse in this way is, in a sense, “breaking who you are.”[4] Really worth it?

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.

GRADES:
[1] les & Leslie Parrot, Save your marriage before it starts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995, 2006), p. 56.
[2] willard f harley, His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Revell/Baker Book House Co., 1986, 1994, 2001).
[3] Parrot, Ibid., p. 56.
[4] Parrot, Ibid., p. 56.