Is there no such thing as "being faithful"?

okay, i don't know if i can post this, but here goes....

my sister's husband is having an affair with another woman. everyone knows, including my sister, so she threw him out of the house. now, i'm not saying it's all my brother-in-law's fault or all my sister's.

i have a couple friends at work (female) who also experienced the same thing. one divorced her husband, but in a really weird way, is still living with him. the other friend has worked it out, or so she says.

last week, my mom tells me that my sister's husband wants to come back home. my response was, no way! he'll just do it again! but my mom said, and this kind of shocked me, that all men stray. then she proceeded to tell me that her husband (my father) strayed. "They all do it," she said.

now, i know women "cheat" too. but i guess, since i'm a woman, thinking that i'd never be in a relationship with a man anyways, but just in case, i was wondering what other people thought. is it true?

i've been thinking how people want to find their "one true love" but i think it's more like 5 or 6. i think that everyone has more than one "soulmate" and that we just haven't met them all, or maybe when we're with one soulmate, another comes into our lives, etc.

does this make sense? i don't trust people anyways, but i guess it kind of shocked me that my mom would say what she did. she's in her late 70's. she's not senile.

edited to say: my father's dead, just so you know.

thanks for reading.

peace,

splash

Hi Splash,
I know what you say is true about many people-being unfaithful that is. I hope that there are a lot of men and women who really are faithful, though. I think there are those who take their vows very seriously and who would not cheat, too. I know of some.

I believe that when a spouse is cheating there are usually signs of it. One of them is a change in the sex life-less to put it bluntly. There are many subtle clues. The old "working late" all the time. Then there are the obvious clues like finding strange underwear in the glovebox, etc.! The person generally acts different when unfaithful. There are some who are experts at it though, and hard to catch.

I think there are faithful people out there and I hope to find one some day. When we use our intuition we can usually sense when a person is not faithful. Something telling us that something has changed, something is wrong, something is up. It's not always an affair but it could be. Finding out about the person's past love life and lifestyle can be clues, too, unless there is a big change.

I think it's sad that there is so much unfaithfulness.


"Things work out best for the people
Who make the best out of the way things work out."
--- Author Unknown ---

Yes there is such a thing as being faithful. I have a loving significant other who I trust fully to be faithful to me. I know people will say that they trusted their partners too, and that they still cheated. This is true in some cases but I have never worried about him straying from me.

Maybe the difference is that we both left marriages because our spouses were cheating on us. Mine with numerous people and his with any man she could find. There were never any signs to point to him cheating. I mean he did not work late, our sex life did not change (probably because he always got what he wanted no matter what) he never gave any sign that he was unfaithful. I never knew the thruth until he gave me a sexually transmitted disease (then tried to say I was the one who cheated)

Many men and women are unfaithful, it has almost become an acceptable thing in our society, But I believe there are faithful and loyal people who take the marriage vows seriously. Unfortunately they are not the ones who we here about all the time.

I hope that your sister and here husband both find some counseling either together or apart. Remember you can not control if she takes him back, so be supportive. Hope that everything works out for the best.

Oregon

hi oregon, hi curlyq,

thanks for your posts. i'm glad to hear from others who are not as skeptical as me.

i live a lot of my life in my head, because i've never had a real intimate relationship with anyone "in real life", including my family. so, i can create any kind of life i want. for many years, i dreamed that i would be with one true love, no cheating, not even the thought of it.

anyways, my sister seems to actually be doing better without her husband. he's starting to give her less and less money (only $20 this week), and is showing less interest in taking his son for the day on Saturdays. my sister seems happier without her husband around. i could never understand why they got married in the first place. i thought i knew my sister, but apparently not very well.

anyways, thanks for giving me some hope. i'm feeling old these days and don't see myself getting married anyway, but i just thought it was weird that my mom, after being married for almost 50 years to one man, would say that about her husband (about straying).

take care everybuddy. thanks again for sharing...

splash

my parents have been married over 25 years. my dad worked so hard to get my mom to marry him he doesn't even think of cheating although he does flirt with waitresses and cashiers. His point of view appears to be "look but don't touch". but he's never cheated on her. All things considered, if he had a choice between pamela anderson and my mother I suspect he would choose my mother. I personally feel it shows disrespect to the person you claim to love when you flirt with someone fo the opposite sex, especially in front of them. of course, he also claims to be a casanova when he was a teenager, so soem of it might stem from that.

The thing is in the course of a long marriage many bad things happen. People hurt one another, forget to talk, forget to show they care. When this happens things break down. My mom and dad have been married for 38 years. My dad had an affair when I was 3 or 4. Things were messed up, he did something wrong. He has been faithful ever since. That would be 31 years now. I was unfaithful a couple of years ago, not in body but in mind. I hurt my husband very badly. But on the other hand it has lead to some major improvements in our relationship. I am ashamed of what I did but I understand why I did it. I was in a lot of pain at the time that he was not able to see. I turned to someone who was willing to see it. It makes me hurt all over to think about how much I hurt my husband.

What I am trying to say is that infidelity goes beyond just jumping into someone else's bed because your horny. It has to do with things that are missing in a relationship. Of course the better way to deal with problems is to get some help from a therapist but some of us aren't smart enough to see that right away.
Zen

<font color=blue>I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but, it comes from within. It is there all the time.--Anna Freud