Remaining Friends After Infidelity

Is there room for friendship after infidelity and divorce? Nothing can be more difficult than to maintain civil, not to mention friendly relations with a person who has caused so much hurt by a betrayal. Sometimes, for the sake of sanity or the children's welfare, it is best to consider friendship rather than continuous animosity.

Harboring anger and pain for a long time is ultimately self-destructive. It may prove harder to maintain especially if an estranged couple is still moving within the same social circle. It is almost impossible to truly talk about the children's welfare if all meetings are marked by fights and hostility. After the law has settled questions about property, custody, and support, divorced couples are better off concentrating on ways to leading a better life separately.

Becoming friends at the aftermath of a bitter divorce especially due to the unfaithfulness of one may not be immediately possible. The hurt takes time to heal which can make even ordinary chance meetings a gruesome ordeal for everybody including the children. It may just be too much to expect for affected couples to consider friendship while the sense of betrayal is still fresh.

Friendship is not impossible to attain especially through time. It is usually the cheated spouse who has a harder time bouncing back, being at the receiving end of infidelity. Most of the time, the cheating spouse has already carved a new life courtesy of the third party. The temptation to wallow in self-pity and harbor anger for the cheating spouse and the paramour is so great that friendship is just out of the question.

It is far easier to discard previous relationships when there is no connecting element that remains like children. Changing jobs and homes can be arranged but changing the father or the mother of children is an entirely different thing. When an estranged couple do become friends eventually, it is best to remember that friendship, like marriage, requires trust to flourish.

The Temptation of a Married Woman

Men have no business providing reasons for married women to think that any romantic attention is being given to them. While everyone clearly knows why married men don't have such business because of their own commitment to their own wives, single men should also know better than to provide reasons for married women to stray on their account. There are men however, married or otherwise, who freely take advantage of the vulnerability of women to participate in infidelity.

Women who are unhappy with their marriage are easy targets. Like any other human being who seek happiness, the attention given by another is sometimes seen as a lifeline towards achieving it. The morality of the act is most often set aside as the division between right and wrong gets blurred in the pursuit of one's personal interest or satisfaction.

An unhappy wife in need of attention can find what she wants in the willing arms of another man. Sometimes, the need is not even physical. An interested man can fill the void for a husband's lack of appreciation for the wife and become the center of a woman's life in the process.

Happy wives are not entirely immune from temptation but have more "defenses" in the form of contentment with their married life. Too much contentment however, can become boring and this is when danger sets in. Marriage should not settle for a plateau just becomes it is a happy relationship. It involves a continuous effort from partners to ensure that it remains happy and not just appearing to be happy.

The Infidelity Clause

Prenuptial agreements are usually entered into by a man and a woman contemplating marriage in connection with determining division of property and assets as well as child custody should the marriage end in divorce. Stipulations for alimony are also typically included. In the light of many unexpected possibilities in marriage, some couples purposely include other stipulations such as the infidelity clause to dictate the consequence of having one unfaithful spouse. Depending on jurisdiction, infidelity clauses may not be allowed to be included in prenuptial agreements.

An infidelity clause specifies a financial penalty to be levied on a cheating spouse which is then awarded to the faithful spouse. We often see such agreements being drawn between high profile personalities because of the amount of wealth owned by one or both parties. However, many lesser known and common people are entering into prenuptial agreements, seeking to protect their own wealth from people who may have less than honorable intentions such as gold-diggers.

The need to insert an infidelity clause or enter into a prenuptial agreement is definitely a sign of the times. People are becoming more and more convinced that trust and commitment no longer serve as a guarantee against infidelity. An agreement is used to "force" spouses to stay faithful on the pain of dire financial consequences. Although it can be credited for a certain degree of success in preventing the occurence of infidelity in marriage, the question is up to when. To what extent can an infidelity clause exert its influence on the parties concerned?

Whichever way one looks at it, the financial consideration indicated in an infidelity clause appears to be payment for the pain caused by the cheater's action/s. In the real world, very few cheated spouses will reject this advantage since it can offer the means to start anew although it does not necessarily remove the pain. Having a prior agreement about infidelity however, tends to precondition the minds of the spouses that there are allowances provided for infidelity even if the primary objective of an infidelity clause is to prevent infidelity itself.

Remove the Competition

The fiercest competition of any cheated wife for the affection of her husband is always the other woman. It is to her best interest then to remove the competition in her own turf to get back her own husband. There is no better time for the wife to make her move than when her husband is still living with her notwithstanding the existing relationship of her husband with the other woman. In this way, the wife does not have to invent reasons to have continuous communication with her husband since they are technically still living together.

In removing the competition, the wife has to come out as the better woman and this is not an easy thing to do especially under the circumstances. The first reaction of most women is to show their claws of anger and hatred. While this is most natural, cheating husbands can use it to justify their infidelity. If a woman is dead-set on keeping her husband, further alienation might not cut it.

Since the competition in marriage is also a woman, the wife has access to the same "weapons" as the other woman. There are basicaly three things that a wife can look into improving - her looks, her attitude , and the home's atmosphere. The wife has an advantage over the other woman in knowing the man better.

The wife should know what her husband finds physically attractive as she's been there and only needs to recapture it. A nagging, indifferent or complaining woman is not exactly the picture of a wife a man looks forward to seeing everyday. Neither does a man want to come home to an unwelcoming wife and family. The home must be seen as a place of refuge and not a battlefield.

Does this mean that a woman has to simply accept her husband's cheating and exert all the efforts to keep her man? A cheated woman doesn't have to and can choose to leave if she wants. For a woman who seeks to keep her husband, some compromises are inevitable. The wife just needs to determine if her cheating husband and their marriage is worth all the trouble she is going through. The other woman loses her relevance when the same things she offers are offered by the wife, and that is no small task to accomplish.

Her Sister, His Mistress-His Brother, Her Lover

Parents are known to teach children about the basics of sibling relationship including sharing things and respecting each other's belongings. In the family, we are taught to share what we have especially when there is not much to get around with. We are also taught to respect each other's personal space even when the physical space offered by a home is limited. Sharing a spouse however is not part of this education. When we see someone become a third party to his/her sibling's marriage, we still do have the sensitivities to get shocked even in today's relatively permissive society.

We get shocked because we do not expect a member of the family to betray a person. Having to contend with another man or another woman is already complicated as it is. The cheated spouse who has to face a brother or a sister as his/her spouse's paramour may not experience any greater pain in the aspect of relationships than this. The situation reveals that not only one but two trusted persons consumated the betrayal. Even the most liberated person may find his/her skin crawling at the very thought of a sexual relationship between the spouse and the sibling.

Most people who enter into this kind of relationship know that they will hurt others and yet they do it just the same. Many have blamed "love" for it. It isn't as if there are no other available male or female bodies in this world to catch their attention but infidelity within the family does happen.

The closeness within families should make relationships stronger but sometimes the closeness between in-laws progress to a romantic or sexual relationship which destroys all other family relationships in the process. No matter how strong a temptation is , people still have a choice. Sharing a man or a woman between siblings is going way too far and to expect it to be accepted at least in our society where monogamous relationships prevail is asking too much from anyone.

Adultery Across the World

Adultery is a form of extramarital sex or sexual infidelity to a spouse. In some cultures, it is considered a serious offense, a crime even. Its criminal aspect is founded on a violation of a contract which can result to considerable implications regarding support, inheritance as well as spousal and children's rights. In a society where monogamous marriage is the norm, adultery can complicate and disturb the precribed social order.

Punishment for the commission of adultery varies depending on the prevailing laws of the land. Ancient China mandated castration for cheating husbands and sequestration for cheating wives. Islam recommends lashing, stoning and death penalty. Some cultures required cheaters to be banished in separate places.

There are even places where a husband is allowed to kill a cheating wife or mutilate her body to prevent other men from being tempted. Most countries in Europe have decriminalized adultery while most Asian countries still treat it as a crime punishable by imprisonment or death penalty. It is a ground for divorce in fault states in North America and merits court martial under US Military rules and regulations.

Because of the highly personal effect of adultery on a cheated spouse, many cases reach the courts as a crime of passion. Crimes of passion are usually committed upon discovery of cheating specifically when the cheaters are "caught in the act". Not a few cheated spouses have pleaded temporary insanity for the crimes of killing cheating spouses and their lovers. Some countries like France recognize this a valid defense on the ground that a cheated spouse is influenced by such sudden and unexpected rage or heartbreak that he/she loses proper reasoning at that specific point in time. Statistics for crimes of passion indicate higher probability of extreme violence or murder in female adultery cases.

One Man-Many Women

In human society, the dominance of monogamous relationships wherein one man and one woman are bounded by exclusivity, is readily observed. Participation in sexual acts by any of them with another is considered infidelity or cheating. There are certain societies however that allow men to have multiple wives. This practice is referred to as polygyny.

Polygyny is defined as a marital practice wherein one man can simultaneously maintain relationships with several women. This practice is observed in certain locations and time periods such as Ancient Hebrew, Classical China, Islam, Ancient India, as well as traditional African and Polynesian cultures. Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and mainstream Christianity have been noted to expressly reject the practice.

For a relationship to be categroized as polgynous, it is not necessary for the man to marry all the women with whom he is simultaneosly having sexual relationships with. It is enough that such relationships are known to society. Abandonment of some wives is not an uncommon occurence given the physical and emotional impossibility of successfully providing equal attention to several wives as well as families.

The most popular form of polygyny is seen in countries where much importance is placed in continuing a particular male lineage such as those of kings and other powerful men. The maintenance of multiple wives and concubines to produce offsprings is quite commonplace in this situation. The arrangement provides a highly disadvantageous position to women and even children who are reduced to mere articles of property rather than treated as human beings.

Even in places where polygyny is accepted and all wives are aware of a man's shared affection, jealousy and competition have not been eradicated. This clearly shows that it takes more than cultural practice and acceptance to curb human emotions.

Affairs - How Long Do they Last?

Let's talk numbers for a while. Infidelity statistics indicate an interesting aspect of the cheating scenario. As to percentage, 50% of extra-marital affairs are said to last from more than a month to less than a year. Coming in a close second are affairs which last for 2 years or more at 40%. The remaining 10% represents the short-lived ones which last from a day to less than a month.

We can surmise by looking at these figures why infidelity poses such an obstacle to a successful marriage. Imagine the considerable amount of time spent by a cheating spouse in providing attention to another which could have been given to the legal spouse. If a single act of infidelity can destroy a marriage to its very core, how do you think can an affair that has been carried on for years affect it?

Cheating whether done once or many times remain cheating per se. But there is something about how a cheating spouse goes to great lengths in violating trust in marriage for a long-standing extra-marital affair. The first instance of cheating is rarely borne of rational decisions and usually brought upon by momentary uncontrolled emotions. A long-standing affair obviously cannot claim refuge for the same reasoning given the sufficient amount of time to think about terminating the relationship.

As a consolation perhaps to the cheated spouses, statistics would again show that cheating spouses rarely marry the person they are having an affair with. If they do, at least 70% end up in divorce as well. Psychologists see these statistics as a representation of the disillusionment that occurs after reality sets in when a once exciting affair is converted into actual marriage. General distrust and guilt are serious concerns to overcome.