Chapter Four – In Regard To Stopping Infidelity, It All Starts With The Basics
One of the biggest questions people have regarding the field of infidelity is how do I stop the act from occurring? The majority of these people do not desire knowledge on preventative maintenance, in other words learning what steps to take so that the possibility of infidelity infecting the relationship in the first place is lessened nor do these people desire to know if the infidelity that they seek is actual infidelity as opposed to a situation that they do not fully understand. They basically take the reactive role as many people do, wait till infidelity rears its ugly head, and then attempt to eradicate it from the relationship. This is a very popular method of relationship correction but it does not hold a candle to fixing problems before they begin. This reminds me of the roach problem that many people in certain communities have. And it always astounds me how people can move into a new residence where there are seemingly no pests at all, but then after a couple of months or years, the new residence is overrun by these vermin and the residents have no idea how it happened. Then what these people do is work on the problem in front of them. They buy hundreds of dollars worth of roach spray each month. They buy defoggers and all types of pest control devices to eradicate the problem. They endanger the health of their families, pets and all who visit by spraying the pesticides on any and every surface that might contain these vermin. Now can this be effective in eradicating the problem? Of course it can. Can this be the best option for correction? Of course it cannot. There are many ways that this problem could have been handled, for instance; these people could have been proactive throughout their residency by having family members pick up after themselves. They could have been proactive by washing the dishes everyday. They could have been doing simple things like discarding the trash on a nightly basis instead of whenever it became too full or unsightly. But as most of us do, we wait until a problem becomes visible and then we try and make it invisible. Many people are taught that if something works, don’t mess with it. This includes appliances, living situations and especially relationships. But the exception with relationships is that if they are not messed with, they will deteriorate. In other words, if you are in one and you don’t attempt to work on it to make it better, it will fail. Basically everything else in life has consequences that can be lived with, like for example, appliances. If you own one and you do not perform regular maintenance or preventative maintenance, it too will fail but what will 99% of the people in this world do? They will go out and buy a new one. If a living situation is like the one described above, then people who do not do regular upkeep on their home’s cleanliness will be forced to live with a lot of unwelcome visitors but it can be done. Trust me when I tell you that I have encountered a lot of individuals who live among roaches like the roaches pay rent. The difference with a relationship is that if you continue to do the same thing, and the relationship fails, as it most assuredly will, going out and immediately finding a new one is not an option. Okay wait it is an option but it is not a positive one and a relationship will never be able to progress into anything more than a few weeks or months of fleeting romance or random sex if this option is employed. Being proactive is not a one time thing. It is something, which must be done continuously and progressively for the benefit of the relationship. People need to be proactive and work on problems before they become problems but the problem with that is that when people attempt to discuss the relationship they are in, the significant other very often thinks that the are just trying to start trouble. Many people feel that in relationships, if there are no problems, there never will be – until of course when they actually arrive. Then most people try to do two things: the first is fixing the problem. The second is wonder how they arrived at the problem. This information is not by any stretch of the imagination new. People in relationships know this but for some reason or other they like to believe in the momentum therapy. This means that how a relationship is going is how it will continue to go. This belief is a popular one also but what this belief does more than anything else is put people in a complacency zone or false sense of security, which allows infidelity to walk right into the relationship and do whatever it wants to do. In any venture that an individual, corporation or entity decides to undertake, the most basic rule for any chance at success begins with a plan. It does not have to be a well thought out plan or even a feasible plan but it must be a plan nonetheless. There are those who believe that the best chance for success is that of trial and error but these people have limited success or if they do have great success, it is often after several failures. This is not in my opinion, the optimal formula for long term success. Everything in this world, positive or negative starts with its foundation. The tallest building in the world will not weather the mildest hurricane if it is built on street level. Relationships are no different. Everything in a relationship, whether it is positive or negative, starts with the foundation of that relationship. This brings us to infidelity. Infidelity, just like the above two examples, is no different when it comes to planning. Infidelity does not happen by someone waking up and saying ‘today, I’m going to cheat on my significant other.’ It, as with everything else in a relationship starts with the basics and by basics, I mean the things, which occur from day one. The things such as the communication or lack of, the getting to know the other party in the relationship and the getting to know how the other responds to adversity. Many people who are in long term and even short term relationships are dealing with issues relating to infidelity which are little more than a lack of communication. And this is because many of those people do not discuss what actual infidelity is, so they respond and react to what they think infidelity is, thereby causing unnecessary harm to their relationships. When people get involved in relationships, often they will try and do what makes the other happy. More than that they will try not to do what makes the other mad and this often includes overlooking things at the beginning of relationships which they honestly do not like or approve of. The reason why these people do these things is often so that the relationship will have the best chance at succeeding or if not succeeding, then at least continuing. As the relationships progress, these overlooked things often resurface and cause an undue amount of detriment and why, because people have started their relationships not on truth but on the hope that truth would come in later after the relationship was solidified and save the day. Many people don’t want to hear this but this is all a part of deception. Deception is not only lying. It is also hiding the truth from others. When people perpetrate this type of deception, it is because they want to stay in the good graces of the other. They want to secure this person so much that when the other decides to reveal his or her true self or feelings or intentions, the other will have but no choice than to accept it – or risk losing whatever happiness that has been gained in the relationship so far. A prime or common example of this is the woman who never goes out but is encouraged by her girlfriends to go to the club because she works too hard and needs a ‘break.’ She accepts and while there, meets a gentleman who is a club regular, meaning he goes to this particular club every week. The one time club going woman and the every week club going man hit it off and begin dating. The woman does not continue going to the club because it is not her thing but does not object to her partner going because it is what he is used to doing and she does not want it to be said that she is trying to change him. As the relationship progresses, the woman begins to make demands that the other cease his club activities. This causes turmoil in the relationship. The argument goes as follows –
‘You have to stop going to the club’
But why? I met you in the club, this is what I do!’
You’re probably going to the club to meet other women!’
‘I go to the club to have fun’
‘You have me now, we can have fun together’
‘I don’t like going to the club and you should not like it either now that you have me. Either you stop going or you risk losing me.’
The belief in the mind of the man will be that the woman had this as part of her plan all along – to eventually stop the man from doing what makes him happy and content or in other words, change him. The belief will be in the mind of the woman that since the man met her in the club, that the only reason he continues to still go is to meet other women. If this situation does not change it will become a situation, which resembles infidelity because the truth, which was that the woman is not an avid club goer was not divulged in the beginning. More of the truth, which was not divulged, would be as follows: I do not like men who frequent clubs; it just so happened that we hit it off but I cannot live with somebody who lives that lifestyle.
People have and have always had what I like to call unspoken expectations when it comes to relationships. These are basically things which one person in the relationship believes the other should be doing and not only that but should be doing without having to be told to do so. This by most accounts is a reasonable expectation because almost nobody wants to have to lead a significant other by the hand when it comes to a relationship. Now these expected things could be anything from taking out the garbage to being a good father to the children to proposing after a certain number of years of dating, all the way up to never being unfaithful. The problem with these unspoken expectations is that they are in fact unspoken and much of the time, the person who is expected to know and do these things has no conceptual idea that he or she is supposed to do them at all. Why is this such a problem? It is a problem because it is something, which should have been done (and by done I mean discussed fully) in the beginning of the relationship. What people in relationships do not do is talk – and if you really think about it, isn’t that a bit contrary to what people do to get into relationships? You see there’s this thing that I like to call the momentum mechanism. This is where people begin a relationship with so much enthusiasm and energy that they and everybody else around them are under the impression that the relationship will continue almost as if by magic. They figure that there is no need to work on the relationship by being proactive and preventing problems before they come - only by being reactive and fixing what appears to be broken after the fact. This, if you look very carefully under a microscope, will resemble lack of the dreaded communication. And as hard as it is to believe, many people in relationships only communicate with one another about certain things – and then they only communicate about those things provided they do not aggravate the other party in the relationship. This is not communication. This is selective communication. This is ‘I will do whatever I can to provide just enough of what resembles a happy relationship without pissing the other off.’ This is what often causes infidelity. A lot of grown ups in this world are not adults. They are grown kids. This means that just like kids, if their bad or inappropriate behavior is not corrected, it will continue into later stages in life. The same thing holds true for what kids think is appropriate or good behavior; it will continue as long as it is not challenged or corrected. When people are in relationships and they assume that what they are doing is right, it will continue as long as the other does not complain. On the same note, if there is no conversation about what is expected, the relationship may continue on an unhappy and unending road of unspoken hopes. As with the situation above, people are either expected to immediately or eventually change or forever stay the same. If the truth is not discussed in the beginning of relationships, problems will always follow.
Everything from finances to intimacy to how children should be raised are things, which should be discussed before and during the relationship – mostly before. However many people get into relationships based on misconstrued priorities such as how an individual looks or how an individual makes them feel at that particular moment. These types of priorities are especially problematic for those who have opposite ways of thinking when it comes to things like bill paying or budgeting. If for example a person who has perfect credit gets involved with someone who has Al Bundy type credit, one of two things are guaranteed to happen – either the finances of the one who has Al Bundy type of credit will improve or the finances of the one who has perfect credit will deteriorate. Chances are if people have a history of bad credit, it will not too likely change for the better once they become involved in a relationship. When people have problems with finances during their relationships, it is often, not always but often because of them veering off the budget beaten path. It is because they make a major purchase without the necessary funds to pay for that purchase. It is because they lose or change employment. It is because family members pass away or because of some other unexpected expense. But it is most often because people do not make an initial plan of how the finances are to be taken care of. People do not say we will make this purchase when we get this much money in the bank. They say wow, let’s get that and we’ll pay for it over time. Then, when life gets in the way, these people are thrown into a tailspin trying to get out from under the bills. I believe that if everything in life were done proactively, life would yield more positive results but most of the people do not do things proactively, they do them in a reactive manner. Which is why people get credit cards to pay off other credit cards. Which is why people take out loans to pay off other loans. Which is why people find themselves in infidelity situations and they have no idea how they got there. If people were to get into relationships and say to one another ‘I will be honest in this relationship in all things, feelings and experiences, then there would be no room for deception but people don’t do that. What people do is say I will be honest as long as I don’t hurt the other’s feelings. They say I will be as honest as much as they can stand. What they say is I will be honest just as long as it does not cause any backlash to me. This is not honesty. This is pacification. This is the complacency that people are often lulled into by hearing what it is they want to hear instead of hearing the truth. This is also one of the things, which causes infidelity. If people would just adopt the philosophy of resolving problems and issues before they come, instead of as they come and allowing them to fester and magnify in size over time, there would not be all of these insurmountable issues in relationships often causing their demise. This is one of the reasons why I believe that a little bit of adversity is necessary when people get involved with one another. When people experience adversity early on in a relationship and stay together, they learn how to grow from it. They learn how to deal with an unpleasant situation and do whatever is necessary to make that unpleasant situation pleasant again. People often question how telling someone exactly what they want to hear can lead to infidelity. The answer to this is simple. When you tell someone what he or she expects to be told instead of what they need to be told, you are in essence lying to that person. It does not matter if the lie you tell makes that individual smile for a hundred days or a hundred years, the bottom line is that a lie is being told – and here’s the major hypocrisy in a lot of relationships: lying is the one thing that almost everybody in a relationship says that they detest more than anything else but it is also the one thing that almost everybody in a relationship needs to make them feel good, accepted or at the very least, normal. People will always tell the person they are in a relationship with that whatever they are doing is right or if not right, then right enough where it does not cause detriment to the relationship. They will almost never say I don’t like you looking at other men or women because they know its something that everybody does. So what do they do? They accept it but with stipulations. They say things to the effect of you can look but don’t touch or you can look but not with me or even don’t do it in a disrespectful manner. This is not so much uncommon as it is time dependant, meaning that instead of discussing this and things like it when it should have been discussed, as in the beginning of the relationship, it is usually discussed after something occurs which triggers the conversation. That something could have been a significant other getting caught looking at a member of the opposite sex. Now note: things such as this are as mentioned before, not in any way insurmountable when it comes to problems in a relationship but what it can be is something that causes the significant other to believe that more that what actually is going on is actually going on if they are not discussed early on. I completely understand that there is no way a couple can talk about and examine every issue that may ever come about in a relationship beforehand but the major issues, things that will adversely affect the relationship, like children and how they are raised, exes and whether or not they should be allowed in the picture, finances and sex – especially sex, MUST be thoroughly communicated to one another. The other big thing I left out which many, many people in relationships leave out when getting to know one another is where each of them wants the relationship to go. People for some reason or other just believe that the relationship, once initiated will continue with all of the joy and happiness and jubilation, which was experienced from day one. They feel that if nothing is done to upset the flow of the relationship, then the flow of the relationship will never be upset. They feel that if marriage is never discussed in the initial stages of the relationship, then it is not desired. Things like this will always cause problems later on in the relationship because they were not discussed initially. This does not mean that on the first day of meeting somebody, a person should say that they want to be married in two years and this is because that type of honesty will scare the average Joe. I used a man for that example because men almost never stipulate when, if ever, they desire marriage. This means that before the relationship is consummated, it should be clear in the minds of both how the relationship is expected to culminate. On the same note, if an individual has no intention at all on becoming a wife or a husband, then this too should be communicated before the relationship gets too far underway. Unfortunately, this is the part of communication, which scares people. A person in a relationship telling the other exactly what he or she wants from that relationship can often be giving that person just the ammunition necessary to manipulate that relationship to his or her benefit. Think about the above example where a woman has stated to her partner or prospective partner that she desires, rather demands marriage in two years. If the partner had no intention on ever getting hitched, he could ride out the relationship for a good 700 days or so – just enough until the woman he is dealing with realizes that he is never going to marry her and then step off into the sunset, never to be seen again. I was told a long time ago that when you inform others about your situation, they then know how to manipulate it. This is why people only communicate about certain things and at certain times. Communication is a very tricky and at the same time necessary thing. If you communicate too little, your partner may think you’re hiding something. If you communicate too much, your partner may use that communication against you. Talk about a no win.
When I talk about it all starting with the basics, I am also speaking of the fact that many in relationships are not truly happy or compatible with the ones with whom they are in a relationship. Now if the average individual were to examine this, it would seem contradictory to the very reasoning of why most become involved in relationships in the first place. Unless a relationship is one, which is based on deception, most people have a need to be happy or at least compatible with the ones they choose to involve themselves with. Think about this for a second. This is the equivalent of saying ‘I don’t like you but I want to be in a relationship with you.’ If that’s not a good enough example, then how about ‘we have nothing in common but I still wanna begin a relationship with you.’ This makes no conceptual sense but the strange thing is that people do this all the time. Now I know that there is this whole opposites attract thing that many people claim they fall into but my thing is that a couple must have at least one iota of compatibility or else the attraction will cancel itself out. Another way of saying this is that the relationship will be a fake from the beginning and subsequently fail. This is not something, which occurs over an extended period of time as with some long term relationships but something, which starts at about the same time as the onset of the relationship. Nowadays people are getting involved with others for every reason under the sun except love. They are involving themselves because they may have had a one night fling and it resulted in a pregnancy. They are involving themselves because others say that they should become involved in certain relationships and they are even involving themselves in relationships because society mandates that by a certain age people should be involved. The main problem with this is that premature relationships such as these often cause people to get together without completely knowing the person with whom they are sleeping. Now true, deception is so strong sometimes that one may never truly know another but I have found that the longer the amount of time invested in getting to know someone, the more the couple will know about one another and the better off that couple will consequently be. People who are together but not compatible can be incompatible in a number of ways. They can for instance be total opposites when it comes to the sex. In other words she can be the freaky type and he can be somewhat or completely prudish. When these people get together without exploring things as important as sex with one another, unhappiness will more than likely follow and the longer the two are together, the easier it will be for infidelity to slip into the equation. These people can be incompatible in ways regarding attitude and prejudices, meaning for instance, while one may see the homeless situation in this country as atrocious, the other may see the exact same situation as comical. People who are together but who are not truly happy from the onset of the relationship could be unhappy because the person they are involved with is not as attractive as they are used to. This is not a cheesy excuse. This is how many people base what is important in their relationships. People, instead of choosing a partner who has more than one positive quality, such as the ability to take care of a family and maintain employment, will sometimes only choose a partner who is the optimum in appearance. Sometimes, these people, if they cant find perfection in appearance will temporarily put aside their shallowness and deal with somebody who is not as pretty or handsome as what they are used to – but all the while searching for someone who is. This is where the getting to know thing comes back into play. As mentioned previously, deception is sometimes so strong that a person may never know the true intentions of the one perpetrating it but this is where extreme communication should come into play. The thing I find which immensely helps deception is the fact that people do not always communicate the way they should. They usually only communicate enough to satisfy the most basic of needs and desires. They usually only communicate to the point where the other does not get annoyed. This is good but at the same time bad. Nobody wants to piss another off with the ultimate goal of getting to know this person better but if people stop short of finding out what it is they truly want to know because they are afraid of hurting the other’s feelings, there can be quite possibly dire and life long consequences. People who read my books sometimes think that I am a little extreme in my examples but think for a second, what if two people wanted to become sexually involved and one wanted the other to take a std test as a provision of the sex act but the other didn’t want to – or worst case scenario what if the other never discussed the sexual history before the present relationship? This could prove disastrous if the relationship were allowed to continue.
There used to be a time when people would use religion as the basis for how relationships should be initiated. These people would use the laws and directives of a higher power to determine what a proper relationship should entail. That time was when two parent households was the norm and not just a thing of the past as it is today. Now people do not make religion the focal point of their lives. And one of the main reasons is because they do not focus on the message as much as they do the messenger. They do not realize that everybody has failed or will fail and as such they equate religion as being the belief in a man as opposed to a higher power. In short they don’t really believe in it at all. These people feel that they can do better on their own. They feel that if a marriage is not working then the only other option or the best option is to terminate it instead of working at it to make it better. In their lives, the basics entail only doing what is necessary for their immediate happiness and not their long term happiness. These people do not believe in stay married till death as the laws of many religions dictate. They believe in stay married or in a relationship as long as the times are going good. The bad part about this other than that belief is the fact that they do not relay this to the other person when they become involved with that other person. So in essence they are perpetrating deception at the beginning of the relationship under the guise of an actual relationship.
One of the things, which I have found, that puts a stumbling block in the path of infidelity are the ramifications, which occur after the cheating act has been perpetrated. Some of these ramifications are the prospect of sexually transmitted diseases, loss of home or family and even the loss of financial security that a person may have had before the indiscretion. But there is one greater ramification that people fear more than the above and that is how people are viewed after the act takes place. It seems that some people actually care more about their reputation than money, family or other tangible items. Being viewed as a slut, whore or worse is unfathomable to some people.