Why Being Faithful in Marriage Is Important for Saving Your Marriage
Don’t be deceived. Being unfaithful or opening up your marriage to sex with others will lead to the end of your relationship. Faithful and loving bring fulfillment.
Almost on a daily basis, I see relationships which have been destroyed by a lack of fidelity between marriage partners. Often the unfaithfulness is committed by one partner, but sometimes it is done consensually, with so called open marriages. Either way, the result is always the same–loss of trust, loss of respect, and loss of love. Sometimes people even agree to allow their partners to have affairs in the hopes that will save their marriage. I have worked with many thousands of people over the past 24 years and have yet to find when allowing an affair or being open to infidelity has ever let to marriage improvement, let alone saving a relationship. If you are considering having an open marriage or allowing your spouse to have affairs, you need to be fully aware that you will be doing as much damage to your relationship as your spouse does in having the affair. It is likely to become your biggest regret.
Faithfulness is not promoted on the internet because it doesn’t sell products
If you want to find information supporting cheating, open marriages, and such practices, it is not hard to find. What you will not find, however, is any legitimate evidence that these behaviors improve or save marriages. Quite to the contrary, you can find many accounts of how these behaviors have utterly destroyed relationships. Many of the people writing these pro-cheating articles are directly or indirectly benefiting from the breakdown in relationships. They are often sponsored by dating sites or are trying to sell you products which will are promoted by anti-marriage beliefs. Please note the lack of advertising on my website. My material is not promoted by anyone. I am not striving to give you popular messages so that I can get a million followers and sell ads. I want to help you love your spouse and feel peace in your life.
Think about your own experience and that of your friends and relatives
I always encourage people to learn from their experience. Don’t simply swallow what anyone feeds you, including God. The things that I write about on my website are mainly from the Bible, but they are not simply regurgitated. I have tested them in my life. I have learned that God knows what He is talking about–that we get more love when we give it, that our relationships are better when we are faithful, that there are real world consequences of ignoring what He says is right for us, that He will give us what we need if we will go to Him. Whether you believe in God or not, you will have the same consequences for your actions that everyone else does. Ask yourself two simple questions:
- Have any of your relationships every been saved by cheating? Improved?
- Have any of your relationships or those of your friends and family every been damaged by cheating?
Don’t disregard the Bible before testing what it says in your own life. No one in the history of civilization has ever been able to show that biblical principals are damaging or that anything in the Bible is inaccurate. Find out for yourself.
Guarding our hearts
The feeling of love can be eroded by our spouses treating us badly or neglecting us. It can also be eroded by what we say, think, and do. When we think of our spouses in a positive way–remember what they have done and do for us, when we treat our spouses as the most important people in our lives, and when we talk about our spouses to other people in way that shows how much we love and appreciate our spouses, our love will remain strong. On the other hand, if we focus on the negatives, when we talk about our spouses in negative ways, and when we behave in ways that are not faithful to our spouse, our feelings of love will fade.
Poor boundaries promote unfaithfulness and rejection
One of the most common places to see women allowing their husbands to have affairs is when their husbands have separated from them. They know their husbands want to have sex with other women and are afraid to oppose this since they know their husbands will choose to leave them rather than give up on their desires to have sex with others. What they do not realize is that by allowing their husbands to have sex with others, they lose their husband’s respect, they program their husbands to always be unfaithful, and they prevent their relationship from ever becoming close again. And having sex with a cheating spouse is always a costly mistake.
People can’t simply get sexual desires for others out of their system
Many women and some men think that if they only let their spouse get their desire for sex with others out of their system, that they can then have a monogamous relationship again after that. The result of feeding desires is never to weaken them, but to strengthen them. By allowing your spouse to have sex with others, they will emotionally disconnect with you (even though they initially show appreciation for your understanding). Many times they will fall in love with someone else and most of the time they will stop loving you and find it impossible to fall in love with you again, even if they try.
Good boundaries save relationships
By refusing to continue a relationship with a spouse who is cheating or who is planning to cheat, you prevent your spouse from being able to have his or cake and eat it, too. Your spouse will either need to remain faithful or lose you. If he or she does lose you, many times the relationship can still be repaired later when your spouse realizes his or her mistake and is willing to stop the cheating to be with you again. This is something that would never happen if you allowed the unfaithful behavior. If you give in to a cheating spouse, your spouse will never learn that marriage and cheating don’t go together and will never fully commit to you again.
Don’t date a cheating spouse
If your spouse is being unfaithful, do not have physical intimacy with your spouse. Also, do not date him or her. Rather that that reconnecting you, it will simply validate your spouse’s unfaithful behavior. Your spouse will end up saying that life is improved not only by his or her behavior with others, but by your interactions as well. He or she will not be drawn away from others, but will have both of you. You will end up sharing your spouse’s affections with someone else and eventually you will become resentful. I have never met anyone who could share their spouse and not resent it. You will end up pretending to be happy with your spouse while you will actually be angry with your spouse. Your love for your spouse will be utterly destroyed.
Legitimate marriage counselors will not work with a couple when there is current infidelity
This is because they know that relationships cannot be built when the infidelity is still going on. The unfaithful spouse will not fully commit to the relationship because that would remove the justification for the infidelity. There are many unscrupulous and ignorant coaches and counselors who will tell you that you can build your relationship with your cheating spouse by simply being loving and that by doing so, he or she will naturally be drawn back toward you. It is a nice sounding idea, but something that does not work in reality. As you strive to treat your spouse more and more nicely, he or she will continue to cheat on you until eventually you become resentful and despair. By that time the coach or counselor has made their money from you and tell you that unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that their method is going to work with you. What they don’t tell you is that it was their method that got you to this point of despair.
Even things that feel good can have bad consequences. Learn to live according to what is right rather than what feels good
God gave us the Ten Commandments not for His benefit, but for ours. When he told us not to commit adultery, it was because He wanted to preserve the family. God loves us and is not arbitrary. When we do things counter to what He says is right, we can feel it at some level. If we disregard that feeling, we may have pleasure for the moment, but will create distance with our spouses, our children, other family members, other people of good quality, and from God. When we seek to have illegitimate sexual relationships with others, we are attempting to satisfy a need that cannot be satisfied this way. We will always lose more than we gain, so that we have an unending, unfulfilled desire. It is similar to trying to use drugs to feel happy. The more you use, the more you need, but all the while losing in so many other areas.
How my wife and I stay faithful and keep our love alive
It is not easy to stay faithful and to keep love alive, but it is rewarding. The love my wife and I have for each other brings meaning and purpose to our lives. It gives us a reason to get up in the morning beyond our daily obligations. We want to see and be with each other. So, how do we do it? First, we don’t try to get our needs met from each other. We depend on God to meet our needs and develop our relationship with Him by daily prayer and Bible study, and by worshiping Him at church each week. Secondly, we strive to give the best of ourselves to each other and to make each other feel loved like no one has ever done before. Our focus is on giving love, since that is what creates love in each other. We never say bad things about each other to anyone else, and I thank God each day for giving me such a wonderful wife.
Where to start?
To start to overcome your neediness, while also getting your needs filled, you will need to have a relationship with God. It is not enough to know about God, we must receive His forgiveness and His guidance so that we can live and love securely. He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. If you sense that there is more to life than just grasping at whatever the world offers for pleasure, then learn to have real inner peace. Here is a good place to get started with that. There is nothing for you to buy and you won’t need to sign up for anything. It is between you and God: https://peacewithgod.net/
