Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Sometimes people are very tempted to cheat in retaliation because their spouse has cheated on them first. There are often many factors that contribute to this. Sometimes, it is revenge. Other times, there is curiosity as to how it feels to cheat. Finally, many people figure that if their spouse is allowed to go outside of the marriage, why should they not be allowed the same privilege?

A wife in this situation may feel like this: “my husband has been cheating on me with a woman from his job. He says he will stop cheating if that’s what I want but he doesn’t seem particularly sorry. We have two kids. I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to leave him and raise the kids on my own. Lately, I’ve been thinking that I should just cheat too. That way, I won’t feel as resentment because he gets to do something that I don’t. And if we are both cheating, then no one has the upper hand. We will both be getting our needs met while staying together for our children. This is the best scenario that I can imagine, considering our circumstances. Maybe when the kids become adults, I’ll leave him. But for now, I feel like I am stuck with him and I feel as if I deserve to do whatever he is doing.”

In some strange way, I was able to follow this wife’s logic. After all, the privileges given to one spouse should be given to both. But, I don’t consider cheating a privilege. From my own experience, I consider it as poison to your marriage. Simply allowing it merely because both people are doing it seems to me as if both people are giving up on the marriage and conceding that there is just nothing left. Since the wife made it very clear that she wanted to stay married for the sake of her children, I didn’t see the harm in trying to make the marriage a fulfilling and healthy one. If they tried and failed, then what would be the harm? The wife already appeared to have given up anyway.

The thing is, when you know that your spouse is cheating on you (whether you appear to accept it or not) this does something to your soul. Even if you try to convince yourself that you are really OK with this because you intend to do it yourself, deep down this is so damaging to both you and to your marriage on so many levels.

There’s an old saying that most of us learned from our mothers which says that two wrongs do not make a right. It may well sound old fashioned, but I believe that in this case, it is absolutely true. In a sense, having both people cheat is like piling on more pain and more damage to an already difficult situation.

I know that the wife felt that the best case scenario was to continue to limp along for the sake of the children. But if they were going to stay together for the children anyway, why not attempt to rebuild the marriage into one that is actually healthy for the family? Because it is very unrealistic to think that there is not going to be a lot of tension in the house when both people are cheating.  And this environment isn’t all that great for the children either.

This is only my opinion of course. But I believe the best scenario would be for the husband to stop cheating (and he had even said that he would,) and for the family to begin the healing process. Quite frankly, I know that happiness is possible after cheating. It is a long hard road, but it is a road that can be worth it. With all of this said, I can’t imagine happiness when both spouses are fully aware that the other is cheating. I’ve actually heard from folks in this situation on my blog. Many have told me that they thought that their retaliation cheating was going to make them feel better, but it often does just the opposite. Many people report feeling guilt, or disgust or a lot of confusion. Frankly, infidelity brings about a lot of emotions, most of which are negative. Why bring more of this into the mix when things are already so difficult?

To me, the bottom line is that if you don’t want to be part of your marriage anymore or if you want to be with someone else, then the best thing to do would be to end the marriage first. But, if you’re only looking at retaliation cheating in order to feel better, then I can tell you with a decent degree of confidence that feeling better almost never happens as the result of retaliation cheating. In fact, many people who cheat in retaliation end up feeling worse because they’ve introduced a new round of problems and issues onto an already difficult situation.

I really never had the urge to cheat on my husband because I knew how devastated I was when he cheated on me.  And the whole idea of sex outside of your marriage was frankly a turn off to me at that time.  I was pretty disgusted by the whole process.  It took a long time before I was receptive to the healing process.  But today, I’m glad I took that chance because my marriage is intact and I am pretty happy.  If it helps, you can my story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com/

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