Sex Q&A: Redefine What it Means to Cheat

After someone cheats, it can be difficult to trust them again. Even worse, your feelings you have for them may be affected. There is another way to look at this and all it takes is an adjustment of your perception.

Do You Really Want Him Back?

Lisa from Harrison, Arkansas asks:

I’ve been in a relationship with a man for four years now. For the most part, it has been the most amazing relationship I’ve ever had. About eight months ago, he started cheating on me with a coworkers’ step daughter. The affair lasted for five months. I was caught off guard by his change of character, and ended our relationship after I found out for sure about the affair. We were separated for a little over a month, and I started to date another man. My ex fought to reconnect and renew our relationship. After a while, I gave in and took him back. I love him so much that it’s hard to give him up. But the trust is so severely tarnished now, it’s affecting the feelings I have for him. I need so desperately to understand why this all happened in the first place, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He only wants to move forward and get back to what we had together. Without closure, I find it difficult to move forward. I feel undesirable knowing that for five months he could so easily toss me to the side for this other woman. I’m so confused about where I should go from here. He seems so sincerely intent on changing things and working on our relationship, but doesn’t fully understand the complete devastation his actions caused.

Liam’s Response:

Greetings, Lisa. Let’s try to make an attempt at clarity here; a movement toward illumination. This will require, as is so very often does, a bit of a change in your perceptions. The current rules and regulations of society will not help you. As the great writer Terence McKenna once so wisely said, “Culture is not your friend.” But I sense in you a heart that is not hateful and a mind that is not judgmental by nature, so I think you are one of the few who can move beyond the indoctrinations of your age to come to higher understanding.

Monogamy is not a natural condition for our species. The concept as a whole can only be found just over 17 percent of the time in about 563 societies sampled in Murdock’s Atlas of World Cultures. The modern Western concept of romance actually came into being with the rise of the Courtly Love movement in the time of the Troubadours. It’s a notion that borrowed its concepts from various sources to eventually become a political and theological imposition. Sadly, our strange view of how romance should work, our unrealistic expectations, our longings, desires and heartbreaks have far less to do with human relationships than with our lost spiritual connections.

Your man stepped out on you, because the human sexual cycle runs about three years per bond. The two of you made it four years, so now you’re at a point where you may decide to stay together longer. But this has to be a very conscious and practical choice, because the passions you had at the beginning will not be what carry you forward. In nature’s court, your fellow did nothing wrong. Yes, he’s an idiot, because he never talked to you about it before he did it. And he’s an idiot for refusing to talk about it now. But he’s human, a great ape, subject to hormones, ego, self-loathing, doubts and fears. He’s not a god, and he cannot provide you with security, constancy or unconditional love. If you want to succeed with him, you’re going to have to be realistic about him because as Meatloaf would no doubt advise, “there ain’t no Coupe De Ville hidin’ at the bottom of this particular Cracker Jack box.” I believe him when he says he wants to do better, because I see that he really does love you. You’re a true partner to him… a real friend. And believe it or not, when the friendship is important enough, a man actually can put it above his carnal desires.

Now there are those who would say you can’t help how you feel about all this. They would say that because you’re a woman, you’re incapable of having an open mind or liberal attitudes regarding sex. They would site your endocrine system as the culprit, based on science produced by men who apparently equate the human female with voles and fruit flies. Hopefully, you know better. The problem isn’t your glands, it’s your soul. You want a lot of things from this man. You want not just to be loved by him… but utterly adored… because we make our partners, our fragile human husbands and wives, into idealized spiritual beings responsible for saving us from the torment of our existence. If someone would just love us enough, we might be spared the soul-deep, spiritual pain that comes from being robbed of our mystical heritage. Our restless, yearning search for “the One” is a quest for our lost love affair with Deity; the journey of Saint John of the Cross and so many others who followed their Beloved into the Dark Night of the Soul to find answers, our latest bestseller on human relationships just will not provide. You can make things work with this man, Lisa, but you’re going to have to go easy on him. He’s not always that bright, but he means well.

Liam

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