A few weeks ago I woke up from a dream that bordered on a nightmare.
I only dream a handful of times a year, but when I do they are typically very vivid and detailed, though I try not to put too much stock in dreams either. In this particular dream I was in a situation in which I was tempted towards adultery with someone I knew.
In the dream, the other person equally struggled with the same temptation. Both of us were in happy marriages; neither of us wanted to damage them or inflict harm upon our spouses. Nothing physical happened in the dream, as it never got to that point, but the feeling of having stepped into a riptide of attraction remained for hours even after I woke up. I was relieved it was just a dream.
The reality in my real life is that in thirteen years of marriage, I have never once been in a situation in which I was tempted to be unfaithful. That's not to say it can't happen, only that it hasn't so far.
I suppose part of that can be attributed to my adoption of the "Pence Approach" of never being alone with a person of the opposite sex (married or not) and having an "open-book" policy with computers, phones, email, texts, etc with my wife. I also (thank God) have never picked up on any "vibes" from any member of the opposite sex I've come into contact with that were flirtatious or suggestive.
In the past few years I have known or known through association five people who cheated on their spouses. Four were male, one was female:
Person 1 cheated on their spouse with a lower-level associate from work. Divorce ensued. Person 1 is in their mid-fifties.
Person 2 cheated on their spouse with a neighbor, also married with children. Divorce pending. Person 2 is in their mid-forties.
Person 3 cheated on their spouse with a series of prostitutes. Still Married. Person 3 is in their mid-forties.
Person 4 took up a new partner when the spouse was diagnosed with cancer. Person moved in with new partner, but is still legally married. Person 4 is in their mid-sixties.
Person 5 took up a new partner when the spouse was diagnosed with dementia. Person moved out of state and in with the new partner, but is still legally married. Person 5 is in their mid-seventies.
It's always tough to judge actions while withholding judgment of the individuals. The actions are indeed worthy of condemnation, while it is up to God to judge the people themselves.
Some cheat because they are unhappy or unfulfilled in their marriage, but not always. One woman who was in a "happy marriage," but who still found herself engaging in an extra-marital affair, found the chasing of fantasy (rather than pure physical appetite), part of the allure:
"Affairs are by definition precarious, elusive, and ambiguous. The indeterminacy, the uncertainty, the not knowing when we’ll see each other again—feelings we would never tolerate in our primary relationship—become kindling for anticipation in a hidden romance. Because we cannot have our lover, we keep wanting. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and keeps the flame of desire burning. Reinforcing this segregation of the affair from reality is the fact that many, like Priya, choose lovers who either could not or would not become a life partner. By falling for someone from a very different class, culture, or generation, we play with possibilities that we would not entertain as actualities."
It also goes beyond attraction. Tiger Woods was married to a bombshell, but cheated on her with a homely Denny's waitress (among others). It doesn't make rational sense. In fact, the fact he confessed to sleeping with 120 women seems downright compulsive and borderline pathological.
Affairs often don't "just happen" though; the term "slippery slope" is cliche but apt here. There are often early warning signals and opportunities to shut down the potential towards unfaithfulness. The problem is that individuals who fall into adultery don't often heed these signs and take swift action to flee the situations, but instead entertain and engage them.
But why? What is it about the seedbed of affairs that blinds us to the dire consequences of such an act of betrayal? It's equally hard to find a common motive among adulterers, but I'm going to try anyway. I think the elusive common denominator (which applies to both men and women, albeit in different manifestations) is attention.
I suspect that for women, there is that innate desire, as Olivia Newton John's famous song expressed, "to want to be wanted." For men, there is a similar reflective quality; men want to be wanted to, but not typically for emotional needs. Instead, when a women sends out signals to a man that she is interested or inviting, it is reflective in the sense that he sees himself in her advances; i.e., "there is something about me that turns this person on." And that is itself the primary turn-on: it strokes the ego in a masturbatory fashion.
This symbiotic feeding of egos is a common thread in adulterous relationships. When we fall in love with our spouses before marriage, there is of course a primal physical attraction that gives us an impetus to marry and carry on the species. Before marriage, this must be resisted not because it is bad, but because it is good. Eventually, that good desire is able to be given its right of place within the context of marriage for the generation of children and the bonding of spouses. As time goes on in a (healthy) marriage, we find that we continue to struggle with selfishness and bruised egos, but that love demands that we forgo such narcissistic tendencies to will the good of the other. As the love deepens and matures and becomes less preoccupied with itself, we find that we hurt when our spouse hurts, and feel joy when they feel joy.
There is nothing good about an affair, however, and no self-giving is present. Affairs are, almost by definition, completely self-seeking and egotistic. They are an attempted replacement for something...something that may be tarnished and worn but still of great value and which should have been given pride of place. In a Christian marriage, when one looks in the eyes of their spouse, they should see Christ whom they serve. In an adulterous relationship, one looks in the eyes of their lover and rather than seeing Christ, they see...themselves.
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Affairs always hold the allure of excitement early on. Like all lies, it looks outside the self for validation. Even the excitement that got one into this mess in the first place becomes a trap. Whereas one's ego may be stroked in the partner's desire reflected back to him, eventually you get tired of looking at your own reflection, because sin is not comely, but ugly. And yet sin, like insanity, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result each time. It shouldn't take a hundred and twenty cocktail waitresses as human collateral to realize that the problem is not them, but you.
Narcissism and adultery are like the peanut butter and jelly in the rotten sandwich of sin. Self-centered, a lack of empathy and concern for the feelings of others, manipulating to achieve what one wants, a need for admiration...scratch a narcissist and you will likely find an adulterer underneath the surface.
The thing about a healthy marriage, though, is that while the physical can sometimes become commonplace over the decades, the capacity to know the other beyond just the sexual deepens. Adultery is like a plastic kiddie pool of physical pleasure where you splash around for a few weeks or months but in time discover how shallow the water is.
The marriage bed, by contrast, is like a coral reef where decades of monogamous sexual self-giving has produced a deep bedrock of nuance, colors, and subtlety. The longer you spend there, the more unplumbed it seems to be. What seems 'boring' and common over time has suddenly become bright, mysterious, and teeming with life.
It's a fragile ecosystem though; one act of adultery is like TnT'ing the ocean floor and potentially destroying all the delicate coral and sea creatures in it. Just like any natural disaster can be cleaned up and nursed back to health over time, a marriage can recover and heal from such acts of infidelity with the grace of forgiveness and the hard work of contrite marital penance.
No one seeks to have an affair because they want to work hard, but because they want to play. One must learn to look in the mirror and seek not the titillating rise of a stroked ego, but the true image of one's sin in contrast to the goodness of Christ, who had no guile in him. One's spouse can help reflect Christ to the other by their own grace and forgiveness, but it is work...and work is an attribute of marriage.
In the five examples listed at the beginning of this post, none of them really had a happy ending. They may have had different endings that are not yet finished, but a lot was needlessly sacrificed because of the self-seeking gratification that an affair or different partner promised. People got hurt, as tends to happen with sin. The people involved are not necessarily happier, which sin also promises but does not deliver on.
But this is all of us as well. The things we chase that entice us and then vanish into thin air leave us in an unfamiliar cove, cold and alone, because we did not heed the commandments given to keep us from this fate in the first place. Avoid at all costs the fatal blow of adultery. Contrary to what the world teaches, "happily ever after" in faithful monogamy doesn't have to be the unattainable pipe dream it's portrayed as. When love is true, nothing can separate us from it. That true love is God in Christ Jesus, but its reflection is in our spouse, who lives and breathes Christ for us. Marriage is the arena in which we train to perfect this love so that when we meet our natural end, both partners can together wear the crown.
Related:
"I'm Living the Cliche"--Extra Marital Affairs And The Illusion Of Happiness
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