You’re a culinary expert getting ready to have the biggest night of your life at your restaurant and your husband calls to tell you he’s not showing up. Throughout your relationship there’s baggage that both of you carry and this time it’s surfacing at the same time for you both.  You want to be in the spotlight tonight and you want to share it with your partner. Your partner is battling problems in his own life and tells you a meeting is running later than expected. Little do you know his meeting is over and he’s sitting at a bar by himself, drinking, and wallowing in self pity.  You feel unimportant and not loved. You feel hurt and crushed that your husband is not sharing the most important moment of your life with you. You have a lapse in judgment after having a server at the party flirt with you, and ultimately you end up cheating on your partner that night.

If you watch Brothers and Sisters on ABC each week this story will sound familiar to you.  It’s been the show topic the last couple of weeks as partners Kevin and Scotty go through the battles of infidelity in their relationship.  The event happened one time while they were going through a rough period in their relationship.  After finding out about it Kevin and Scotty break up and the family goes into full swing trying to get them back together, because they’re supposed to have the perfect marriage.

My husband and I have had brief conversations about cheating throughout our relationship as well. Usually these chats consist of, “if you ever do something like that, I’m gone.”  I can’t say I can blame him for feeling that way though because it’s the ultimate violation of trust to cheat on the person you’ve committed yourself to.  At the same time I don’t worry about it because I’d never do that to my husband in a million years.  I respect and love him far too much to ever put him through such pain and hurt.

After watching Brothers and Sisters the last couple of weeks it made wonder what everyone else thinks about the subject. If you were faced with the horror of infidelity, would you be able to forgive your partner for the mistake?  If so, would it be a one-time exception or would you give him or her multiple chances?  The show really gave its viewers something to think about.  Kevin and Scotty have been together for a long time and Scotty made a bad decision.  Even though Kevin is crushed and heart-broken he still loves Scotty and wants to continue to grow with him.  At first he’s absolutely unwilling to forgive Scotty for his actions, but in the end it appears that Kevin has re-evaluated the situation and may be taking him back to make things work.  Obviously it’s not as simple as forgiving and forgetting, but I think the point that is being made here is not to be so quick to abandon your relationship because one person makes a mistake.

With that said, I asked myself what I would do if I were put in the same situation.  After giving it some thought I’d like to believe that I would be able to forgive my husband if something like this were to happen.  At the same time I really can’t fathom my husband ever doing something like this to me.  Honestly, it’s really hard to say how I’d react to a situation like this until the problem presented itself.

After doing some research online, I found some interesting information about infidelity that I thought I’d share.  Men are typically more likely to cheat, so it’s fair to assume that this issue could be a problem in male relationships.  It is believed that cheating is usually not a rational choice but one that is made when an individual is experiencing emotional distress of some kind.  That information alone leads me to believe that infidelity is avoidable if you vow to keep your relationship healthy.

A healthy relationship is a lot of hard work and involves open communication and compromise between the partners. Each person has to be willing to give and understand what the other person needs.  If you’re able to be open and honest with your partner, there is no reason why you can’t have a lasting relationship.  When communication breaks down, lack of respect surfaces, and each person fails to genuinely care about what the other needs, and that’s when a relationship will fall apart.  Since there’s already a complete lack of communication, one partner won’t say anything but instead will resort to infidelity.  It’s all a chain reaction of events which is completely avoidable if both agree to openly work on having a healthy relationship.

If you desire more information about infidelity, including statistics, please visit the Truth About Deception website!

Photo by Karolina Grabowska