Sanford Infidelity Expanding Our Understanding?

Governor Sanford's infidelity has certainly gotten a lot of attention, but what is all the outrage, shock, and finger pointing about really? If we're not Mrs. Sanford or one of their children, what's it to us?

As Byron Katie has pointed out, there are only three kinds of problems - - my problems, your problems, and God's problems; and two of those categories are not our business. If we are staying with our own business, it seems odd that on a personal level infidelity, cheating spouses, and adultery elicit anything other than sadness, discouragement, or confusion. People are human after all.

And yet people are angry. What is different about how react to it in people in leadership positions? Why are we angry when we hear about their cheating on their spouses? Why do we act as if they have done something to us similar to what they have done to those accepted their commitment?

A way of looking at it that struck a chord with me was expressed in the Daily Tar Heel newspaper at the University of North Carolina today that asserted that the core issue in infidelity is one of whether this person is able to place keeping a commitment above self interest or not. In the case of a public official we are concerned that they are able to manage their desires well enough to fulfill their commitments to all of us.

I like that. We put this person in a position of trust that does affect us and they have shown us that they aren't up to keeping that kind of promise.

Of course it doesn't even start to address how one is most likely to be successful at meeting that high, admirable, and ( I think ) appropriate standard given that we are (as previously mentioned just in case you had forgotten) . . . . human.

Apparently faith wasn't enough for Governor Sanford, though without questioning his sincerity, demonstrably he still fell short.

Of course no one knows, but at this point my suspicion is that our efforts to be good people and to try to deny and suppress those parts of ourselves that are capable of doing bad things is at the heart of the problem.

You can find more consideration of this and related topics with particular focus on those of us old enough to know better but alive enough to still do dumb things at my website, www.better-reationships-over-50.com.

Financial Infidelity?

Financial infidelity is an idea that I had never heard before, but it made perfect sense after I thought about it a while. It also really brought home just how high the bar is when it comes to really being true to a relationship.

The concept of financial of infidelity was spelled out recently in a book by the same title which was reviewed well in the Huffington Post blog. This doesn't involve another person as in the case of a man having a secret bank account to pay for prostitutes or hotel rooms, it is less clear cut.

Basically, the idea is that when one partner spends money and hides the fact that they have in one way or another, they are being untrue to the relationship. They aren't really working as a team at that point and it is corrosive. In this case I think cheating describes what's going on better than infidelity.

In an example in the Huffington article, a woman considers buying a new bicycle and keeping it in the nighbor's garage so her husband won't find out. Sounds kind of goofy at first, but think about it in terms of the relationship. They apparently don't respectfully confer and agree on expenditures, which is a red flag whether she buys the bike or not. She is also thinking about keeping a secret and enlisting the aid of her friend in doing it, which is a sure fire way of drifting further apart.

The end result, at best, is likely to be that they increasingly run on parallel tracks, a sad but apparently stable situation that many couples view as relationship success. The problem is that it doesn't take much to de-stabilize one of these. It can be something as simple as getting to know a couple whose relationship is closer, more respectful, and . . . . well, happier, and then it is only a matter of time before it falls apart.

Actually, it might be looked upon as a material manifestation of emotional infidelity, the tricky little relationship time bomb that I discussed before here.

Does Infidelity Ever Die?

Talk to anyone who has ever been caught in an affair, admitted to an affair, or seriously accused of being in an affair and one thing you will hear over and over is that nothing they do or don't do seems to make any difference. It is always hanging over them.


Talk to anyone who has caught their partner in an affair, had their partner admit to an affair, or who has seriously thought their partner was having an affair without being able to prove it or get a confession and the one thing that you will hear over and over is that there seem to be nothing that makes them feel safe again.


Apparently, how surprised you are by your partner cheating correlates directly with how bad it is for you, how hard it is to move on.


This is why finding out that your partner, lover, spouse has been unfaithful to you leads to a form of post traumatic stress disorder. The theory goes something like this - -

• We live in a very uncertain and dangerous world and there isn't much we can do about it. The incidence of bad things happening may be low, but it is always there.


• To survive and manage the uncertainty, we act as if it isn't going to happen to us. As long as it doesn't, this strategy works pretty well.


• When the unimaginable does happen to us or to someone close to us and this strategy is torn from us, our internal environment becomes very unstable. In other words our mind/body/emotional system freaks out.


• Getting back is possible, but tough.

Moral to the story? If you decide to mess around, if you allow yourself to be convinced to cheat, if you think that you are just too wonderful for only one person, if you find yourself slipping into infidelity and don't do anything to stop it, you are setting yourself for disaster.


You will probably blow your relationship up and if you avoid that you'll be taking on baggage that you'll lug around for a long long time. Ask anyone who's tried it.

Revenge Affairs

Dr. Bob Huizenga has recently written about what he calls the Revenge Affair as one of the identifiable types of infidelity. What is it?

The obvious answer is that when your partner has had an affair, you get back at him or her by having one of your own. Simple, right? Well, yes and no, because I think that emotional revenge or distancing can happen in a number of ways using a number of tools.

Can you be untrue to your relationship by how you relate to:

• your children?


• your grandchildren?


• your job?


• your hobby?


• your humanitarian causes?

I think that you can. It all depends on how you do it, what your intention is, and how it affects your partner.

Worth some thought? That's up to you.

Infidelity In A Nutshell

You can't put infidelity in a nutshell. It's as simple as that.

Back when the assumption was that women were chattel and that messing with another man's woman was messing with his property it probably was simpler. I don't know.

But now? Wow!! There are old fashioned affairs. There's cheating. There are emotional affairs. There are internet affairs.

I got access to a very good article on the topic recently. You can find a link to it and to other good stuff on the topic at www.better-relationships-over-50.com.

The author pretty much covers the waterfront on the topic of infidelity.