Cheating can be sexual and emotional

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Cheating may not mean just sneaking in and out of the hotel. Your husband’s friend has just phoned again-for the third time this week. While you’re slaving away in the kitchen or putting the kid to bed, you hear them laughing on the telephone and your hackles rise. Are you being unreasonable and petty, as you know they are only friends and nothing more?

Not really. When your spouse starts keeping others company and his interest is diverted elsewhere, it is perfectly normal to feel betrayed in some way. Infidelity is not necessarily only sexual – it can be emotional too and yes, this can make a marriage suffer. A strong emotional connection between your spouse and a friend/colleague, with whom lots of emotional intimacies are shared, will eventually drive a wedge between spouses, whether there is a sexual relationship between them or not. Very strong emotional attachments elsewhere could be very dangerous for your relationship or marriage. Is there much to choose between emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity or is one worse than the other?

Suspicious Spouses Turn Sleuths

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Technology is the kiss of death for illicit romance. In this era of camera phones, e-mail, text messaging and bugging devices, are we having the final fling, asks Prem Paul Ninan.

These are troubled times for unfaithful couples. Living in an age where technology has taken control of every part of the lives of people, relationships too have come to be defined by it. However, individuals across the globe who have flirted with technology in an attempt to cheat their better halves (always better when being cheated by the other, and who, these days, don’t always have to be married to one) have discovered soon enough that it is becoming increasingly difficult to cheat technology. True, technology has made it a lot easier for many to have relationships with people other than their spouses or partners, and to be quite discreet about it too. But sooner or later, very often, the same technology that helped one maintain a clandestine relationship for a while turns into the very evidence that brings about the downfall of the affair. Like a carnivore turning on its captors!

Commonly used media

Take mobile phones and the internet for instance – probably the most widely used media used by unfaithful partners for illicit affairs. The relative permanence of data stored by the use of software, is the basis for suspicious spouses-turned-sleuths to turn the heat on their partners. People use software because it gives them a sense of privacy and a feeling that they may actually be able to pull off something (no pun intended).

Consider the mobile phone. The benefits of text messaging, for instance, are many. There are many instances in which a person, while talking to his partner on the mobile phone, receives a message from someone he might not have ever met before, but with whom he has been carrying on a distance affair. The person is able to view the message and even dash off a quick salacious reply to his or her lover, only to return to the beloved’s call, without the unsuspecting partner even realising anything might have transpired.

Once the affair is on in full flow, however, it’s hard to keep your partner from being suspicious. There was a case in which a man carelessly left his mobile phone in his car and to his misfortune, his girlfriend saw a message coming in from his lover. She even went through a deleted items’ folder he did not know existed, and extracted more incriminating messages.

While most lovers are undoubtedly cautious in deleting ‘private’ messages, there is no telling when they might slip up. Ashwin Mohan, a wellness consultant, says that a friend of his who was in a dual relationship, once inadvertently sent a message intended for his lover, to his intended instead. He had hell to pay after that. Pradiksha Oommen, a third year BA student, says her friend once left her mobile phone with her boyfriend, so she could visit the loo. At that point, a message came in from her boyfriend’s male friend with whom she had been communicating for some time. Not bothering to confirm the nature of their friendship, the jealous boyfriend furiously broke off the affair.

The camera phone

Then, you also have today many mobile phones coming with built-in cameras and recording devices. These can be switched on quite casually without the unsuspecting unfaithful even knowing a thing. How one goes about this is one’s own affair, but there’s no denying that once recorded, it is quite an incriminating piece of evidence. You also have small digital voice recorders that can virtually be hidden in the hand. Atin Gupta, a marketing executive, says that one of his friends, who once got suspicious, got a girlfriend of his girlfriend to record a telephonic conversation she once had with her lover. With this evidence in hand, he confronted his one-time girlfriend, who, after an initial denial, finally gave in.

Detective agencies

Private detective agencies commonly use such recording devices to track the activities of cheating individuals, in infidelity cases. However, Puneet Kumar, executive director of the Globe Detective Agency in Bangalore, says that his agency primarily relies on physical surveillance in such cases. “Most affairs of an illicit nature are generally physical, involving sex, and only sometimes get emotional. In order to keep track of a person’s activities, the agent’s physical presence is critical, and no device can replace this.” The detective service usually sends two agents, who carry basic cameras, on the track of the suspected cheater.

The agents prepare detailed reports of the victim’s movements and take photos only if there is absolutely no risk involved. Bugging devices can only be planted if the affair is going on in one’s own house, in which case the spouse is made to plant the device. “Otherwise, there is no telling where the affair may be taking place. It could be anywhere – hotels, cars, the workplace.”

Come now to the internet, which is also extensively used by unfaithfuls. While chat rooms have allowed illicit affairs to mushroom manifold, through the hidden identity it provides people, there are dozens of spyware programmes being developed that allow people to sneak view the suspected cyber relationships of their partners. Software programmes like Spector, developed by Spectorsoft in the US, are able to record such activities in detail. The programme operates like a quick-clicking camera, taking pictures every few seconds of whatever appears on the screen. The pictures can be played back in a slide-show fashion, like a jerky 20’s film. Prashanth Ninan, former manager, IT infrastructure at Altivo Information Technologies Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, says that there are even key-logging software programmes, that record every single key typed, including the spaces! This means, that with a little bit of effort, even an amateur can hack into the e-mail accounts of his or her partner. And what makes these softwares so attractive is that they are generally not very expensive and can therefore be sneaked into the home computer quite easily.

Credit card bills

But it’s not all about software either. There have been so many small technological advancements that have allowed couples to spy on each other fairly easily. For instance, credit card bills provide suspecting individuals ample fodder, especially with unusual gifts, restaurants, travel or unspecified charges. Unexplained bank statements, detailed phone bills containing data on unusually long calls made to certain unknown numbers, even the receipts that are billed from shopping centres, regarding unusual purchases made, can be recovered by a prowling cuckold on his partner’s trail. For some, the snooping around can become almost an obsession, as one such individual in the US candidly admitted, after spying on his wife’s cyber indulgences.

And if you think that such snooping around is confined abroad, you’re quite mistaken. Puneet says that his agency gets about 15 to 20 cases of infidelity a month, in Bangalore. A majority of the complainants are men, he says. But is it morally wrong to spy on one’s partner, using technological aids? Prashanth definitely thinks so. “It is a despicable thing to do, and anyone who does so is not worth being in a relationship,” he says. “Most people who do so are not married, but are usually in live-in affairs and are not willing to commit anyway.” Atin, who is going to be married in December, feels the same. So does Deepa Priyadarshini, who is into corporate communications. Both feel that trust should be the basis of any relationship, and that misgivings about any extra affair could always be handled at the personal level.

Whatever may be the view, it is clear that technology has made snooping a lot easier, and affairs a lot more challenging!

FIDELITY CHECK

Signs that your partner may be cheating on you:

Sudden increase in time away from home

Decreased sexual interest

He or she is often distracted and day dreaming

He or she is often unavailable at work

He or she attends more work functions alone

Cell phone calls are not returned in timely fashion

He or she leaves house or goes to other rooms to talk on the

telephone

He or she uses the computer alone and secretly

He or she asks about your schedule more often than usual

Mileage on car is high when only short distance errands are run

Clothes smell of perfume, massage oil residue and sex

Clothes contain makeup or lipstick smudges

He or she gets the laundry done independently

Viagra usage increases

Extramarital affairs: Are women really to blame?

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Background Information: I am a graduate of Chemistry, and a retiring teacher and inspector of education after 31yrs of meritorious service in altogether five stations with the Federal Ministry of Education. I am also a freelance writer having publications in certain Nigerian print media. in May 2005 I and my wife shall clock 30yrs as a married couple. my wife also is a civil servant. together we have two grown up sons. We have all managed to keep afloat and weather the storms of the tempestuous seas just as many families, in spite of all odds, have done.

Attitude to published works of other writers and authors.

I am an old boy of Old Government College where the old custom is subsumed in the doctrine: ” it is good, if you want to criticise the published works of other writers and authors, do it amicably and justly and not sarcastically, where necessary and applicable. It is better, obviously to write and publish your own observation from your own angle and point of view on the same subject instead of criticising the published works of fellow writers and authors. in reviewing a book, let your views be based more on the book’s merit than on its demerits”.

And so in this response write up, instead of placing undue emphasis on the apportioning of blame, efforts are made to identify the causes and profer lasting possible solutions to the problem created by the indulgence in extra-marital affairs.

Real life experience or no real life experience basis.

There are many schools of thoughts on the current subject of discussion: extra-marital affairs: are women really to blame?

Actually, I have no opportunity to read the main article written by Rotimi Oyekanmi of the Guardian Group of Newspapers and so it is hard for me to accurately estimate what degree it was based on real life experience solicited by you from respondents. There is a parallelism between real life experience and true confessions stories characteristic of the sleek magazines. I hope Oyekanmi’s main article was not a true confession.

If every human angle story were to be based on true life experience, then it would be absolutely necessary for only those who have achieved sainthood and gained the rewarding positions in the kingdom of God in heaven to write creditably books on HOW TO BECOME SAINTS or HOW TO GO TO HEAVEN, instead of prophecies for their followers, apostles, disciples on earth aspiring to sainthood to read and implement in their life-styles.

who is qualified to write and comment on marital subjects?

There is the school of thought based on the Lizz and Dick affairs, which speculates thus: “can Elizabeth Taylor, world famous actress twice married and twice divorced by Richard Burton, equally world famous actor, write a book on successful marriage?” the answer is “Yes, if she knows her onions well and can identify the mistakes of broken marriages and can point out lasting possible solutions to rectify those mistakes, or better if she can identify ways of preventing such mistakes which result in broken marriages from occurring, since it is true that prevention is better than cure.”

The person who can firstly estimate or measure accurately the distance of a race before actually embarking on running, it can so often better assess what the race will be like than the person who firstly runs the race before estimating or measuring its distance. however, not all races are the same.

My observation

On the subject of discussion, my observation is based purely on nobody’s true life experience but on the absolute ideal truth tenable and contestable everywhere in the world. It is unsurprising that indulgence in extra-marital affairs also known as adultery is condemned in the Christian scripture. In the lighter mood in the Old Testament books, the female subjects were considered the concubines of their male admirers and protectors, chivalrous cavaliers. certain extra-marital affairs resulted in highly sensational, scandalous and negative consequences until the Divinely Anointed King of Glory, Jesus Christ, came into the world in His human form and preached not only the permanence of the marital union: “Let no man put asunder what God has joined together”, but also that “No man can give his wife a write of divorce except for adultery”.

These bits of knowledge are well known to every student of Holy Bible. Those who do not want to gamble and dangle with their lives for survival make efforts to avoid the indulgence in fornication and adultery. It is because of the highly sensational, scandalous and negative consequences of the indulgence in extra-marital relationships that many scholarly and scholarstic foreign statesmen and women insist strongly on mutual fidelity and so desist as much as possible from fueling the furnace and fanning the embers of discord between spouses.So they consider that menopause and senility are in suggestible, inexorable and insufficient excuses for the indulgence in secret , clandestine extra-marital relationships which can stain records of service, family’s good name, honour, respect, erudition, ambition, tradition, socio-economic status, reputation, integrity, prestige, character, charisma, history, sweet reasonableness, peace and decorum, unity and stability inter alia.

Factors which motivate extra-marital affairs

Naturally, everywhere in the world, the population of the female is denser than that of males. However, by every intellectual guess, common and stretch of imagination, it is unfair to the other gender group for one to say that women only or men only are really to blame in extra-marital affairs which take two to tango.

The indulgence in extra-marital affairs is traceable to multi-faceted factors, viz ; socio-economic factors, geo-political factors, genetic factors, satanic attack and personal factors.

Socio-economic factor

Societal attitudes, do’s and don’ts, norms and forms, values, customs, cultures, traditions, beliefs, regulations and rules of law and order often provide the adequate or inadequate enabling environment for good behavior or misdemeanour, as one chooses.

This is more so where the hard distinct to follow the Joneses and the peer group pressure to respond to every peer group impulse, urge, whim, caprice, fancy, fantasy, and the youthful persuasion to belong to the peer group impact heavily on the person who is apparently unequipped or inadequately equipped to resist and overcome the uncosmetic influence of the bad and the ugly, and to embrace, harbour, welcome, receive, accommodate, imbibe the cosmetic influence of the good and the beautiful of God’s creatures. Every circle of the society has its own trays of eggs including those bad eggs which constitute bad company which corrupts manners. Those bad people in the society are often like mind-benders who, seeing innocent people who do not indulge in extra-marital relationships have their own ways of inducing and convincing them to indulge in same: “Eh, every one does it oh.

Why do you want to waste your life away like that as if you were a sacred cow? No be me oh.” See my list of my conquests in my diary. Na bottom power be that, or so dem de call am. Money for hand, back for ground no be better.” In a rapidly advancing, civilized society where each of the cost of living and the standard of living but not the cost of living allowance is rising by leaps and bounds day by day, it is easy for a married man or a married woman to be tempted to indulge in extra-marital affair with a supposedly buoyant sugar mummy or sugar daddy as the case may be just to make socio-economic ends meet.

sometimes greed, selfishness, not scarcity, is the motivating factor. Sometimes those who happened to have been led by the nose to have sexual intercourse with married adults when they were still virgins turn around as if to revenge by seducing virgins of the opposite sex to do same with them. then it becomes like what St. Thomas Aquinas in his well known book titled SUMMA THEOLOGICAL theorised as the chain of reaction in which one hand moves a staff which moves yet another staff, which moves yet another staff and that continues in an endless progression.

GEO-POLITICAL FACTORS: Battles and wars, more than natural disasters, constitute the worst culprit for the gross imbalance in the female: male population everywhere in the world. they also constitute the worst culprits through battles and wars to indulge in adultery. sometimes it is because of the gross imbalance in the female: male population of certain geo-political units that one may find that in certain geo-political units, the indulgence in extra-marital affairs is considered unpardonable taboo, abomination before God and man, whereas in certain other where there is no such gross imbalance in the female: male population or where there exists such population imbalance the indulgence in extra-marital affair is considered fun, nothing evil, unpunishable culture, custom, tradition, is surely more likely to indulge in it even when that spouse’s partner comes of a geo-political unit where such is considered a taboo punishable by penalty.

GENETIC FACTOR: Genetic factors runs parallel with geo-political factors. and so the spouse who comes from a family where the indulgence in extra-marital affairs runs through the lineage and so is considered a pastime, fun, unpunishable event, often tends to indulge in it even where and when the other spouse comes of a different family and genetic back ground which on the contrary considers such indulgence an abhorrable abomination before God and man.

other genetic factors are complete bareness and unisexual births in the family. the occurrence of bareness lasting several years can engender frustrations, boat-rocking episodes, accusations and counter-accusations. the consequence may be that one or each spouse may look for an escape route to indulge in extra-marital affair so as to validate his innocence of potence or her innocence of fertility because it is well known that impotence and infertility constitute two of the main causes of bareness. to tell the truth, the elephant’s route never closes unless it has no offsprings.

Concerning unisexual births, when a couple’s biological children are either all boys or all girls, depending on the spouses’ personal psychological balance, one or each of them can be tempted to indulge in extra-marital affair so as to have a baby of the opposite sex from that of their biological children except each of the spouses is strong-willed enough to resist and overcome the temptation, instead of sitting back later to await the results. the motivation is not the fun and enjoyment of extra-marital sex but just to have a daughter where the biological children were all boys , or to have a son where all the biological children were girls.

SATANIC ATTACK: Cupid the God of love teaches that when a well has stayed too long under the eaves of a house, Satan dips hand into it. In the same token, the idle mind is Satan’s workshop. idleness of the mind is known to result in anti-social acts such as juvenile delinquence, sexual harassment or sex abuse, crime etc., but not so often in satanic attack.

Satanic or demonic attack can harass, embarrass and drive the sufferer into indulge in extra-marital affairs simply because the sufferer considers those members of the opposite sex he or she interacts with as not only eligible sex partners but also as eligible spouses. In Igbo language, the common term for satanic attack of the adulterous type is di uwa. the sufferer is sane quite alright but yet possessed by Satan just like a mad person, lunatic, until he or she is ransomed by a genuine divine healer from Satan.

where the sufferer is completely ransomed from Satan, every desire to indulge in extra-marital affair is cured completely also. whereas where the sufferer is incompletely ransomed from Satan, relapse can occur; the unclean spirit continues to instigate the bad habits of reckless adultery, sexual permissivity, seduction, promiscuity, harlotry, prostitution.

PERSONAL FACTORS: People are aware that the indulgence in extra-marital affairs breaks marriages like cassava sticks and that were such indulgence as popular as even the game of football. those couples who cherish and recognise the sanctity of marriage would still hate to play it. yet still, because so many people find it hard to control and overcome their personal limitations, short-comings, they indulge in extra-marital affairs. the spouse who prior to marriage suffered from the unclean and bad habits of lizards or had anti-social antecedents or was sexually hypersensitive and hyperactive like pigeons, and has not renounced nor jettisoned those bad habits at marriage can more likely indulge in extra-marital relationships with former, pre-marital sex partners than the spouse who had no such pre-marital antecedents. as soon as the spouse begins to flirt and the other spouse discerns it and begins also to flirt, there is a time when the man returns home and finding his wife absent from home, he begins to raise dust and enquire: “Where is my wife for God’s sake?”.

The rest of the personal factors include the spouse’s inability to resist and overcome the temptation to lust and flirt and indulge in adultery arising from unnecessary distractions brought about by physical attraction, sex appeal, beauty, sexy manner of dressing, psychedelism, brand and size of the opposite sex, eye-service, signs and mannerisms and pass-words dropped by members of the opposite sex supposedly expressing passionate appeal, desire for intimate relationship with the spouse concerned.

Head or tail, standing or kneeling, the tempter wins where the tempted spouse succumbs to the temptation. Another personal factor motivating spouses into indulging in extra-marital affairs is sexual incompatibility. sexual incompatibility between spouses is evidenced by unsatisfied sexual intercourse where there is no orgasm, climax, ecstacy achieved by each of the spouses or by one of them only .the sexually unsatisfied spouse may resolve to seek sexual fulfillment in extra-marital relationship with an external partner, in spite of whether the couple already have biological children or have none.

The factors which bring about sexual incompatibility and its consequent indulgence in extra-marital affairs include infidelity resulting in the unfaithful spouse who after cheating is no more in the mood for another round of sex and so is temporarily dysfunctional, groggy and unready to have sex with own spouse; certain psychological barriers resulting in one spouse’s aversion for sex generally or specifically with own partner even when the woman is not menstruating; one spouse’s outward or pretended chastity toward own spouse:” I an fasting, don’t disturb me”.

Other factors which cause sexual incompatibility between spouses include the inability of the man to achieve and sustain erection and penetration and subsequently orgasm, climax, ecstacy; the woman’s frigidity which is one main reason against girl-child circumcision also known as female genital mutilation. sometimes proper dieting coupled with pre-sex romance and mutual stimulation and encouragement help a lot to reverse the state of affairs, and enhance sexual arousal and readiness. it is important to know o commence and when to terminate coitus.

Other personal factors inducing spouses to indulge in extra-marital affairs are the urge to escape from masturbation also known as accidental discharge; the application of drugs such as performance enhancement pills and concoctions which enhances the spouses’ hypersensitivity and sexual hyperactivity; the use of contraceptive devices and pills which apparently neutralise fears for unwanted pregnancies but not for sexually transmissible diseases which to some sufferers do not obey the physical law discovered by Sir Isaac Newton: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

LOVE AND FIDELITY: THE SOLUTION AND WAY FORWARD; Love is the greatest commandment of God and the greatest tool of every religion. love is also the all-important binding energy of every tru marriage, love is the answer, elixir, panacea, true and lasting solution to every marital problem. the absence of true love in the family makes the heart fonder. the outcome can be to search the research for an excuse, escape route, an opportunity to indulge in extra-marital relationship until one finds it.

Where every well-meaning, honest-to-each-other couple of good character and learning have love in focus and always remember that in this geo-political and socio-economic unit seeking to become equally democratic as the ret of the world’s best democracies. nothing and no one should put asunder what God has joined together in marriage so that the perplexing idea of extra-marital affairs will be put to rest finally or to flight from every couple who therefore can be once married, always married.

it is well-known truth that the Canadians geese and genders are known for their fidelity and loyalty to one sex partner. this sounds incredible and utopian in the human ear. but what binds the Canadian goose and gender together is love and mutual respect and the feeling of being the others keeper. if human beings can become like the Canadian geese and genders through religion, culture, custom, tradition, and so eradicate the factors militating against marital unity, stability, fidelity and love, each spouse would stick to his or her own marital partner and on one else would come between the couples. where everyone behaves himself well as his brother’s and his sister’s keeper, the domestic rodent can no more be led by the nose to the exact bearing and location of the crayfish in the home and so it can no more run to nitify and lead the bush rodent to the crayfish especially in times like this when people have expanded their horizons of knowledge to the level of awareness that by foreign estimate foreign crayfish earns more foreign exchange than local aiya.

When each concerned spouse, by way of self-analysis which is intuitive, psychological, psychotherapeutic, deductive, and so practicable identifies his or her problem as the uncontrollable indulgence in extra-marital affairs, and recognises the paramount fact that the Great Master Jesus Christ did not condone adultery but yet He did not allow any one of the Jews who wanted to stone Mary Magdalene to death for indulging in adultery to cast a stone on her, the that spouse’s problem is near to solution point. more efforts will be crowned with success.

CONCLUSION: By every intellectual guess, common sense and stretch of the imagination, it is unfair to the other gender group for one to pass the judgement unilaterally, arbitrarily and emphatically that either women really are to blame or that men really are to blame in extra-marital affairs. to say so is like to say that one gender group enjoys the sexual act better and more than the other.

Such unilateral, arbitrary and emphatic judgement is unbalanced. judgement akin to make a preference of either the cosmetic sweet fragrance of a banana and plantain republic or the equally cosmetic sweet fragrance of a pineapple republic just because there is a choice, an option. Supposing everyone were a man or everyone were a woman, who then would be blamed for adultery and fornication?

Dr. Diana Kirschner Tells Woman What to Do if They Suspect Their Man Is Wandering

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Aug 1, 2005
ABC News

What to Do If You Suspect a Cheating Spouse

Cheating is something many spouses are forced to confront. A 2004 ABC News American Sex Survey reported 16 percent of adults have cheated, with 21 percent of men reporting they have. Of the 11 percent of women who cheated, 33 percent said they did it to fill an emotional need.

Marital counselor Diana Kirschner offered these tips on how to approach a spouse suspected of cheating rather than going to the extreme of having them fired:

Watch Your Spouse’s Actions: Watch non-verbal actions. Some clues of lying include a failure to look you in the eye, nail biting and tremors in the leg. Turning you into the bad guy is also a clear sign.

Insert Yourself Into Your Spouse’s Life: Show up at the poker game, saying that you’re bringing a bag of chips. Make sure your spouse’s whereabouts match what he or she tells you.

Confront the Truth: Once you find out the truth, make a decision about whether to stay or go. In some cases, the right decision might be to give your spouse a second chance, but some people use infidelity as a way to force a relationship to end. If your spouse is not remorseful, you have to confront the truth and free yourself.

Great Trust Article

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Excerpt from an excellent article entitled Trust is invaluable in an intimate relationship
By Offra Gerstein

When one person has violated their partner’s trust, the betrayed mate is often profoundly wounded. He/she questions their own worth as well as doubting the partner’s character. Lost trust is hard to rebuild. Once a betrayal occurs the possibility of recurrence is further feared. The trust, loyalty and confidence, which have been the foundation of the relationship, can no longer be taken for granted. Betrayal causes an emotional earthquake for both mates which requires time and tools to restore the stability and security to their union.

If you are accused of being an untrustworthy partner:

Respect your mate’s concern and check with yourself to see whether the assumptions bear any truth.

If the accusation is of merit, admit your part and suggest a repair idea. For example: “I did act in a flirtatious way with the service person, I guess I miss more playfulness between us. I apologize for it and want to talk to you about how we can get closer.”

If the mistrust is unwarranted, provide reassurance to your partner without becoming defensive. For example: “I know you are concerned about money. I do too, and am very conscious about my spending.” Or, “I spend time with my parents out of love and obligation. Above all — I love spending time with you. Let’s plan it better.”

If you have been disloyal: apologize, promise to never repeat the action, reassure your mate of his/her worth and increase your expressions of appreciation and love.

If you feel mistrusting of your partner’s loyalty:

First check with yourself to see whether these are your own feelings ascribed to your mate. For example: “Are you having an affair?’ may be asked by a mate who is thinking of being unfaithful.

If you find yourself assigning behaviors or intentions that are your own, do not accuse your mate, but rather ask them for help. For example: Instead of “You never trust any of my ideas,” try saying “I am concerned that some of my ideas have not been helpful to you, can you help guide me in offering better suggestions?”

Maintain a good sense of self worth by doing whatever affirms your value. Being insecure may lead to mistrust of partner.

When your partner denies the accusations, permit yourself to trust him/her. If the trust is unwarranted, it will be discovered soon enough. If your partner is sincere, you both will be enriched by mutual trust and confidence in each other.

Trust can be rebuilt, repaired, restored and intensified by willing and motivated partners.

Offra Gerstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Cruz for the past 25 years. Her Web site is www.RelationshipMatters.com, and she can be reached by phone at 476-7666.

Chastity belt to catch infidelity introduced

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by Jasmin R. Uy
The Freeman.com
July 29, 2005

Who says partners with extra marital affairs will not be caught?

There is now a new way to catch infidelity among cheating partners after an Italian sexologist has developed a new version of the chastity belt.

Dr. Mandrillo Cirillo, also known as Dr. Seduction or Dr. Thirakmisuk, said he expects that this improved version of the chastity belt would find a market among suspicious spouses.

Designed to attach to a mans or womans underpants, the timer of the chastity belt records the frequency and the length of time the undergarments are removed.

The belt can be taken off if the person would urinate, but its timer will record the minutes once he or she takes off the belt.

“If ones underwear would be taken off for about 45 minutes or so, that certainly needs an explanation saying that urinating would only take 5 minutes. This will surely be a hit as couples who want to display their fidelity will wear it,” Cirillo said while demonstrating the use of the chastity belt.

The cigarette packet-sized contraption, which records the opening and closing of the garter, is a reassuring gesture on the part of the husband or wife having a business trip or vacation with friends.

“At the end of the trip, spouses would have a record as to how many times their partners have taken off their undies or at times their partner might have been subjected to temptation,” Cirillo said.

The belt, which is not yet sold in the Philippines, costs at around P2,500, and can be used for years and as often as the couples would want.

Cirillo said he is expecting a positive response from the government of this invention, as this would also prevent the spreading of AIDS disease in the country.

Cirillo said he also wants to develop a more advanced device that would sound an alarm on a partner’s mobile phone once the belt is taken off for more then five minutes.

He said the device is perfectly possible following his talks with telecommunications engineers. “And if this would happen, this would surely be a hit in the market for suspicious couples,” he said.

How to tell if your gal is cheating

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Valerie Gibson of the Tornoto Sun has an excellent coulmn for men who may have reason to worry.

The reaction rumbles on from recent columns about cheating men. What about cheating women, asked numerous men in their

e-mails?

My column that followed on the subject asked the same question and pointed out that cheating is an equal opportunity activity these days.

Women cheat as much as men, I stated, Why the emphasis only on men?

After the furor died down however, many men wrote asking that, since there were numerous books available telling women how to detect when their men were cheating, where was the information telling them how to spot when a woman is cheating?

Obviously, the e-mails were from men who’d been cheated on or suspected they were being cheated on.

Sun writer Joanne Richard took up the challenge and asked a U.S. infidelity expert, Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil, for a list of signals that might indicate a woman is cheating. She published it in this Lifestyle section.

But judging by the following e-mails I received, many men missed the list and still want to know what the danger signals are.

Marriages hurt by affair can be saved

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Good Advice from an excellent reporter

Jim May
Midland Reporter Telegram
07/24/2005

DEAR FAMILY: I recently found out that my husband was having an affair with a woman from another office at work. I found an e-mail saying he loved her. I waited two weeks and then I finally told him I knew. -Of course, he denied it, but by then I had collected plenty of evidence. He says he wants to stay married to me and I want the same thing because I have always loved him. We have been married almost 20 years. He says the affair has been going on for two years.

He says they only made love a few times and then stopped because they decided it was wrong. She works in (another city) and he has to go there regularly. I told him I would have to go with him until I could trust him again. He has agreed. He says he’s sorry but he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, and I do.

My problem is even though I want this to work out, I have days I cannot quit crying. It’s as if I can see them together and it just happened yesterday. It used to be every night but I have gotten better. I have read at least five self-help books. Our pastor has moved and I don’t feel like I can talk to the new one about this. It is too embarrassing. How long does it take to get over this or can I? How long is too long? Six months, a year? Should I see a marriage counselor? Could you recommend one? I don’t know that he would go, but maybe I should go. I would appreciate any help. Sometimes it is really unbearable. It’s like someone very close to me has died. – VICTIM OF HIS AFFAIR

DEAR VICTIM: It is very hard to get over an affair but it can be done successfully. My professional experience in dealing with affairs is consistent with the research findings that most marriages involving an affair can be saved. Not all of course, but most. The main criterion is that the cheating spouse ceases all contact with his or her lover. When this criterion is met and the couple goes to marriage counseling the five-year survival rates are excellent and those couples even report that their marriage is better than before the affair.

There are a variety of thoughts from experts in this field that may help answer some of your questions. Peggy Vaughan’s research on more than 1,000 spouses whose partners have been unfaithful shows “the key to personal recovery and to staying together is a willingness to talk about the betrayal over a long period of time; but there is no quick fix.” Michelle Weiner-Davis, author of “Divorce Busting,” says, “…healing from infidelity is not a straight line; it is a jagged line with many setbacks. The partner who has been unfaithful may be willing to talk at first, but will balk when the subject is brought up again and again. Recovery takes endurance and patience and compassion.” I would add that since an affair is primarily a violation of trust then “bed-rock” honesty in answering all of your questions is vital.

I have found Dr. Janis Spring’s book, “After the Affair,” to provide the best all around “self-help” presentation for recovering from a spouse’s affair. She organizes her approach around three stages: Reacting to the Affair: “Is What I’m Feeling Normal?”; Reviewing Your Options: “Should I Stay or Leave?”; and Recovering From The Affair: “How Do We Rebuild Our Life Together?” Reading her book should help answer many of your (very normal) questions.

In my experience, marriage or pastoral counseling is a vital component of the recovery process. It would be much better if both of you would go as a couple but if he refuses, it will help if you go. I will be glad to e-mail you the names of counselors if you would like; but be sure to keep God actively involved in the process.

I want to strongly encourage you and your husband to work on your marriage. It is a death but there can be life after death. As Dr. Eric Erikson stated, “A crisis can be a turning point; by making you vulnerable, it can heighten your potential for positive change.” Good luck!

Married with secrets

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Married With Secrets

Anger, confusion accompany revelation that a spouse is gay.

WashingtonBlade.com
By ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG
Friday, July 22, 2005

WHEN I FOUND out my boyfriend of four years was gay I felt a mixture of relief, disbelief and incredible guilt. He was the first person I went to with a personal crisis. But he struggled with his anguish and guilt alone.

I learned that he had been with men during our relationship after I confessed to cheating on him. He told me he had been unfaithful too, also with men. Strangely, the significance of that didn’t sink in at first. He insisted he wasn’t gay; he was bisexual.

I believed him when he said he wanted to stay together. Until that point our relationship had felt close to perfect; breaking up was not something I ever considered. I saw our indiscretions as harmless, a need for sowing our wild oats.

So we both continued having affairs. We convinced ourselves this deceitful arrangement could work. But, of course, it couldn’t.

We finally admitted to each other that we needed to break up when I fell in love with another man. We had become best friends and roommates — not lovers.

But even after we split he still would not acknowledge being gay. There was no Jim McGreevey-style news conference and definitive declaration that he is a “gay American.” This grayness infuriated me. I wanted to understand how our relationship had deteriorated. If he was gay, then our problems made sense.

I kept expecting a meteor of revelation to hit us. He’d come out and admit our relationship had been a lie.

Spouse is out of the closet, now what?

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By PAT BURSON, Newsday

Like many other female fans of Terry McMillan’s work, LaKeisha Rodgers was shocked to learn that the “Waiting to Exhale” author’s husband recently came out of the closet.

“You think some marriages are good, and it’s, like, you think they’re happy, but I guess some things are very well hidden,” says Rodgers, single and 35.

Rodgers saw the movie based on McMillan’s best seller “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” inspired by the love affair the writer had with Jonathan Plummer, 23 years her junior, on a Jamaican vacation in 1995.

McMillan, now 53, recently filed for divorce in California from Plummer, 30, after he told her he was gay. However, Plummer’s sexual orientation is only one of many issues in what will be a very messy, public divorce.

The breakup has all the intrigue of last year’s bombshell from former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, who held a televised news conference — his wife at his side — to announce his resignation after coming out as a “gay American” and admitting he’d had an adulterous affair with a man.

While titillating and tragic, such revelations have more than a few women wondering: If McMillan, a savvy woman who has made a fortune writing about male-female relationships, could be married to him for six years and not know he was gay, are the rest of us only an exhale away from finding out the same about the men (or women) we’re dating or married to?

Finding out your partner is gay is not so uncommon, says Amity Pierce Buxton, executive director of the Straight Spouse Network, which provides support and resources to heterosexual husbands and wives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gay-straight spouses. Buxton, whose ex came out after 25 years of marriage and two children, wrote about the experience in “The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families” (John Wiley & Sons, $18.95).

When spouses announce they’re gay, the focus usually is on them, while the heterosexual mate is ignored or forgotten, Buxton says. “People don’t pay attention to them; they sympathize with the person who came out,” she says. “What they don’t realize is when you’re married, it becomes a family matter.”

Straight spouses must not blame themselves, she says, but allow time to work through their anger and to grieve.

Questions from friends, family members and others can compound the pain heterosexual partners report feeling, leaving them asking, “Why didn’t I know?” But when a partner has become a master at keeping his or her sexual identity hidden, it’s not so easy to know the truth, Buxton says.

Connie Williams, 39, an educator from Maryland, discovered her ex-husband was gay after he contracted HIV from an infected man with whom he’d had a homosexual relationship. Williams, who says she is HIV-negative, now coordinates the Straight Spouse Network’s outreach to spouses of color. “The issue of homosexuality is not dealt with in these communities as much as it is in the larger society because there’s still so much stigma associated with being gay,” says Williams, who is African-American. “We believe that’s why we see increased HIV infection rates among women of color.”

While it appears more husbands come out of the closet, wives do, too, says Dr. Scott Haltzman, a clinical assistant professor in psychiatry at Brown University. Haltzman says he’s treated men who have had not one but two divorces because of wives revealing they’re lesbian.

Ruth Houston, who wrote “Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs” (Lifestyle, $29.95), says if the situation arises, you should confront your partner with solid proof that he or she might be in the closet, not just with your suspicions.

Brenda Stone Browder, author of “On the Up and Up: A Survival Guide for Women Living With Men on the Down Low” (Kensington, $21), suggests listening to your intuition. Browder is author J.L. King’s ex-wife who wrote her recent book in response to his tome about having sex on the side with men during their eight-year marriage.

If you sense something is wrong, she says, be direct. In referring to certain sexual acts, ask, “Has anyone ever done this to you?” or, “Have you done this to anyone?”

If he acknowledges being gay (or you catch him) and you can both still communicate, try to figure out some mutually acceptable way to handle the situation, she says, including whether to stay together and only have protected sex, to separate or to divorce. If talking about the situation is too difficult, find a counselor skilled in handling these types of marital situations, she adds.

If you’re in a heterosexual relationship and find you’re attracted to someone of the same sex, do some soul-searching before discussing it with your mate, says Simma Lieberman, a diversity consultant who specializes in cross-cultural dialogue and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.

She suggests seeing a counselor or contacting a support hot line or group “to help you figure it out — before you wreck your marriage.” If you have these feelings before you say, “I do,” don’t get married, she says. “Don’t do that to somebody unless you have an open and honest discussion.”

After the hurt and pain, you can go on, heterosexual spouses of gay mates say. Browder remarried and has been with her husband 21 years. She and her ex are starting a national “conversation of reconciliation” tour this summer to discuss their experiences and promote safer sex practices, HIV/ AIDS education and testing for everyone, and honesty in relationships.

Whatever you do, don’t be immobilized, Williams says.