According to Dr Shirley Glass in her book "Not Just Friends", sometimes jealousy is not a sign of paranoia, but a healthy reaction to valid suspicions. When a not normally jealous person suddenly gets suspicious, the jealousy is apt to be based on a real threat. She also states that in her research, women who have affairs often consciously detach from their marriages before getting involved.
Women may also try to justify the act in their heads before proceeding. In the Married Man Sex Primer, author Athol Kay refers to this as the "rationalization hamster", also known as the Slippery Slope argument. According to Mr Kay, the job of the Rationalization Hamster is to make up as much bullshit as possible so that she will convince herself that its okay to cheat. It goes something like this:
Cheating on my husband would be wrong, but he hasn't really been paying me much attention lately, and he hurt my feelings the other day. I'm not even sure he is in love with me anymore, plus I just feel so special and loved when I'm with Mr Studly. How can someone making me feel special be so wrong? As a matter of fact, I deserve this since I'm always putting everyone else's needs before my own. It's finally my turn to be happy!
In my case, it probably went something like this:
I haven't seen Mr Studly in a few weeks, and I kind of miss him. I know my husband would be mad if I saw Mr Studly behind his back. We're swingers though and I've already fucked him, so why would seeing him for a quick hello be such a big deal? Matter of fact, my husband is the one who wanted to start swinging in the first place, so there should be no harm in me wanting to see him. If we're going to swing we should just do it all the way, and I should at least get what I want out of the deal. I'll just stop by and say hello after work, no big deal. He'll never find out.
Of course, I'm sure that same rationalization hamster started running on the wheel as fast as possible once "I'll just say hello" turned into clothes coming off.
Once you start having valid suspicions you will need to start doing your best Sherlock Holmes impersonation. Now if that person has cheated just once, and exactly once you may not find any clues because people always start off being really careful. But if it's ongoing as most are, people start to get lazy and less paranoid about being caught so there will be clues. Cellphone text messages are usually the best place to start, as well as e-mail. When checking e-mail, always check the SENT folder, as sometimes people forget to delete these. You may even need to incorporate your friends in the information gathering.
I remember the day I started to unravel everything. I sent a text to the male half of the couple we were friends with and told him I suspected that something was going on between a certain guy and my wife. At this point my wife had already let it be known that she was thinking of leaving me and didn't know what to do. A few days later, my buddy sent me a text back. He had gone through texts between my wife and his, so he confirmed by suspicions. He even told me there was a day that she was going to skip work to go drive and see him. Another week later we were having drinks, and he told me from looking at more texts, that my wife had cheated on me one evening. Now of course when I look back, the clues were there I just refused to see them. To be brutally honest, sometimes I would run across little clues that let me know that certain guys were more than just a "swingers fuck", but I was too chicken shit to confront her right away.
In my next blog, we'll cover what to do (And what not to do, as I made plenty of mistakes) after you gather your intel.
Personally, I take the view that once I can't trust someone, the minute I consider going through my partner's personal belongings to look for evidence, the rot has set in. We are already in a crisis. Cheating destroys trust, that's how it damages relationships - if I've already lost the trust, why does it matter if they've actually been unfaithful or not? The thing that them being unfaithful would harm has already gone: TRUST. I think we should all strive for healthy relationships, and that means that we don't consider things like searching our partner's belongings or withholding their grievances against us in order to store and attack them with it later.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for swinging, some people find it difficult to control their emotional availiability once they are having sex with someone. That's why people who identify as polyamorous struggle to understand, sometimes, how swingers manage to keep that emotional distance. Personally, I can *just* have sex with people, but I do have to employ tactics that restrict the way we bond from early in our interaction.
DeleteThat's an interesting view Annelle. I do think that after infidelity, it is possible to re-establish trust but it takes a lot of hard work from both people, and may even require the help of a therapist. Luckily the therapist we had seemed to be very knowledgeable about swinging and polyamory so we didn't feel like she was judging us. Yes it can be difficult to keep your emotions in check as we found out first-hand. I do think having some rules and sticking by them can definitely help things out. Thanks for commenting!
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