6 Fatal Consequences of Adultery

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Adultery is one of the worst things that can happen to a marriage and violates everything you’ve built with your partner in such a personal way. Many of us who have been a victim to an adulterous affair did not see it coming. We were blindsided, and – before we knew it – were involved emotionally, physically or both with a person other than our spouse. Infidelity can feel like a death: the death of trust, the death of affection, the death of all the work you’ve done in your marriage. The fatal blow to any marriage is an adulterous affair where one or both spouses think they finally found his or her soul mate. Once convinced that he or she married the wrong person or that God put someone knew in his or her life, the idea of divorce can take root and grow. Blinded by the deception of the affair, most people have no idea how they got there, and don’t know how to get out. There’s no doubt about it; adultery affects marriages in the worst way. Here are six fatal consequences of adultery.

Guilt and Shame

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Guilt and shame are big components of adultery – both for those who cheat and for the wounded spouse. When infidelity is discovered in a marriage, and brought out in the open by the couple, usually there is an overt or covert agreement not to tell or hide the fact from others, except perhaps for a close family member or friend. And, they are told not to tell. It’s as if infidelity is a black mark. It’s embarrassing. One would think this is true for the cheating spouse, which it is most of the time. But even in more situations it’s the wounded spouse who feels the embarrassment and shame. The wounded spouse wants to shrink, wants to hide and indeed feels as if he or she is tainted. The persistent thoughts can be “there must be something wrong with me,” “something was wrong with the marriage,” or “I failed.” Life becomes constricted.

Loss of Trust and Intimacy

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A fatal consequence of adultery is broken trust and loss of intimacy. An entangled affair is always the result of an intimacy deficit in the marital relationship. Part of the lure of the affair for an unfaithful spouse was the opportunity to be himself or herself in his or her own little private world they constructed with another person. They desperately needed that freedom to be themselves, to be accepted and appreciated. They didn’t want to pretend or stay within a certain mold, since it was a brand new world with no rules expect those they chose to create with a new partner. It’s important to identify what was missing in the marital relationship and repair that loss.

Divorce

While cheating doesn’t always end in divorce, it can have a devastating impact. It is probably the most damaging thing that can happen to a marriage. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most common problems a married couple will face. Statistics vary on the subject, but it’s widely reported that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will participate in an extramarital affair at some point during their married life. It’s the depth of betrayal and emotional pain that often leads to divorce after infidelity. Such negative emotions are hard to put behind you and many people feel there is no way to rebuild trust in the marriage. If you have found yourself in this situation, take heart, your negative emotions will eventually fade and your life will become normal again. If, for that to happen, you need to divorce, then you are among the majority. That is exactly how most people deal with infidelity in their marriages.

Loneliness

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Infidelity is lonely and isolating. When the affair comes out, people may vanish, either because you told them to stay away, they’ve chosen a side or you didn’t want anyone around during such a tough time. If you’re unfaithful, you don’t want to tell anyone for fear of being labeled every bad name in the book. It’s not dinner party conversation. If you’ve been betrayed you also don’t want to tell anyone for fear of the labeling or the pity or the sense of shame that betrayed spouses can feel, or the unsolicited advice many choose to give. The potential labeling from people who have the nerve to think you were a bad spouse or why else would they have cheated? Or, if you’d have just done this, then they wouldn’t have needed to go outside of marriage (hard, to believe someone would say this, but they do!). It’s also hard to find a safe place or group of people you can talk to and not be told what you should do or how you should feel.

Illness

On top of the dangers of being exposed to different sexually transmitted diseases when a partner cheats, illness can occur. Most people would agree that being cheated on is a miserable experience. It not only has the power to make you feel awful, but also ill. Research over the past few decades provides evidence that suggests infidelity can, in fact, lead to illness. This research suggests that infidelity can be a factor in the development of mental illness and can also have consequences for a person’s physical health. There is a growing school of thought that the discovery of a partner’s infidelity can be a psychologically traumatic event significant enough to trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Marriage and family counselors who confront the consequences of infidelity on a regular basis note that discovering infidelity can lead to depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety and even flashbacks to the discovery, all of which resemble classic symptoms of PTSD.

Life Would Start Over

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Adultery may mean that you have to start all over again within or outside of the marriage. After years of marriage, discovering the affair can destroy you and who you thought you were. You may be close with family and don’t want to hear anything from them about the situation. Then, friends who had suffered this fate many years before have disappeared which leads you back to feeling isolated again. It feels like everything you’ve worked hard for is destroyed. Even if you choose to stay together, it will never be the same again. The pain gets less intense but the mind never seems to rest. Somewhere inside of yourself, you have to find renewed strength to begin to redefine yourself all over again.