As soon as the topics of conversation disappear and the source of desire dries up
After 18 years of marriage, Mark Daniel makes an unexpected confession to his wife Christine. This happened in 2003 while the family was on holiday in South Africa. Their two daughters, who were 9 and 11 at the time, were sleeping in the next room. Suddenly, the husband reveals that he has had six infidelities in the first seven years of their marriage. Although a long time has passed since then, this fact continues to bother him and in some way affect his family relationships, so he decides it’s time to share it.
When I started with the words, “I have to tell you something,” I thought he would reveal that he was suffering from an incurable disease. We talked late into the night. It was devastating. I had no idea what to do. The feeling of betrayal was extremely strong. I was deeply hurt and angry, “Christine told the Daily Mail. At one point he realizes that she was also not the perfect wife and admits that she had sex with another overnight. However, this openness does not automatically lead to the much-desired relief. For a long time, their relationship was painful, although years earlier they started going to family counseling because of problems in their relationship. It was painful, but it also gave a positive result, admits Christine.
Today, the two have created an online application to help couples facing similar challenges. Christine is 59 and Mark is 62, and they say they are closer than ever after they managed to forgive each other.
Their love affair began in 1980, when they were students. Five years later they married and moved from England to Hong Kong. At first, emigrant life seems easy with a lot of work and parties. However, when the children are born and Mark is constantly on business trips because of his work as an engineer, friction occurs. In an argument, the husband omits the following: “I’m not sure I want to be married, and I’m not sure I want to be married to you.” This hurts Christine a lot. “I did not think I deserved it. I cried a lot. I didn’t tell anyone. The only way to deal with it was to try to forget it and act as if nothing had happened, ”she recalled. Going back, he realizes that their sex life was not good. She tried to change, but it didn’t work out. She cheats on a trip to a conference, she doesn’t even remember the name of the man she was with. At that time, the relationship with her husband was strained again because she had to give up her dream job so that he could continue his career in England. “We have been working side by side for years. On the outside, people would think we were the perfect couple – great work, great holidays, but on the inside, we were both deeply unhappy, ”explains Christine.
Mark has been unfaithful since the beginning of their marriage. During the family counseling they underwent, he concluded that much of his behavior and his harsh attitude toward Christine was probably related to two difficult events in his childhood. When he was three, his parents divorced, and 7 years later his mother died in a car accident. Her loss seems to keep him seeking love and approval from women, but the positive emotions from his sexual pursuits are short-lived. “Immediately they are overwhelmed by two feelings – satisfaction and guilt. The main thing was whether I would succeed, whether a woman would sleep with me. Once that happened, it got boring because I had received her approval, love and affection, ”admits Mark.
Christine’s postpartum depression makes things even worse. She cries all the time and tells him that they need help, but he refuses. Taking stock now, Mark thinks he did it out of male pride. But marriage counseling, though very shocking, has taught them to talk about things that worry them and to understand each other. So he decides to admit his infidelity, without even expecting his wife to do the same.
“Now we have intimacy on all levels – emotionally, physically, but it took a long time. We knew we had to work together to clarify what had happened and for forgiveness, ”says Christine. However, she advises couples not to wait for a crisis or affair to make the necessary change, as this is the harder way. Mark emphasizes that sex is not everything and a bigger adventure is to achieve emotional intimacy with your partner and trust, which usually leads to improved sex life.
Aisha Vardag, a well-known divorce lawyer in England, also believes that infidelity sometimes has a positive effect on marriage, and we can learn a lot from the French about this, as they know how to maintain a healthy family structure through sexual affairs. “Sometimes partners get overwhelmed with each other to the point of intolerance and really feel very lonely even when they communicate with each other, because the topics of conversation are exhausted and the sources of desire dry up,” she explains. According to her, the right decision is not always to divorce or to take it for granted. “Sometimes it’s worth looking for romance, sex and emotions outside of marriage without trying to rock the boat too much to keep things like family, home, a working economy and a stable home routine,” says Aisha Vardag.
However, she reveals that the pandemic has created quite serious obstacles to this possibility. Her office reported a 17 percent drop in divorce cases last year and another 68 percent this year. At the same time, all data on domestic violence are increasing. Calls to the English hotline jumped 65 percent.
“When restaurants and hotels are closed, there are no business trips, only work from home, the opportunities for love affairs sharply decrease, but the chances of suspicious spouses who dig into abandoned phones or switched off computers increase,” explains the divorce lawyer. According to her, it is much better to focus on being good and supportive of our partners, rather than monogamous with them, so that we can count on longer and happier marriages. So she would accept if her husband cheated on her. Aisha Vardag has extensive personal experience on the subject. The 53-year-old lawyer is the mother of four children by three men and likes to say that she rarely has anything she hears from a client and has not experienced it.
Each subsequent affair seems easier
American scientists from the University of Pristina have managed to prove that the brain adapts to deception and therefore with each subsequent infidelity there is a weaker sense of guilt.
“We believe that the dull reaction to repetitive actions is related to the declining emotional response to these decisions. The idea is that after the first infidelity we do not feel well and feel guilty. Every time that feeling fades, ”says Neil Garrett of the research team.
Researchers have also found that women can almost always recognize which men are breaking up, even if they don’t know them personally. It is enough to see just what they look like, because the stronger sex with strong male features have a more polygamous attitude towards women. However, the same is not true when it comes to gentlemen finding unfaithful ladies.
Therefore, some common signs that are valid for both sexes have been outlined. For example, people with a sexier voice and a propensity for alcohol and drugs have an attitude towards more partners.
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