I was at a luncheon with my friend Peter, and somehow we started talking about relationships and adultery. Peter is this amazing guy I met in a class I’m taking. He had a bad case of Lyme’s disease and became disabled from it, and you can see that it had ravaged him leaving neurological and muscular damage. His mind and sense of humor, however, are fine and because of that, he’s a blast to be around.
While we were discussing relationships, the question of being ‘true’ and ‘in truth’ to oneself came up. That’s when I commented about something that happened to a friend of mine. About 8 years ago a friend of mine was quite upset because his sister called his mother to say she was getting a divorce and moving in with her boss, who was also getting a divorce. On the face of it, it seemed to throw every value he was raised with in his parent’s face, yet a year ago we revisited this topic and he admitted that for years before his sister left her marriage, the ’signs’ were there - no one wanted to see them though. It turns out that both parties were living in a dead marriage with no hope for revitalization. Both his sister and her husband, and her boss and his wife existed together but had grown apart in almost every conceivable way. By the time his sister decided she couldn’t live a lie any longer, her husband was relieved, as living as room mates and buddies was not his idea of marriage. Adultery, as the term is used, does not happen in a void. If two people are truly in love, committed to each other and honest about their relationship, adultery will not have room to exist. This is because if the marriage is going to end, it will end and not “live on” propped up by artificial “life” saving techniques where one partner has created a belief, often a very committed belief extending to friends and family, that everything is fine while the other partner is wresting with dealing with a disconnect in truth.
Are these situations preventable? Most of change over time, some of us grow spiritually, some of us reject spirituality, some of us need to be right about everything and some of us are willing to try to understand another person’s point of view, some of us are somewhere in the middle, and on and on. When two people end up at diametrically polar opposite positions, and would NEVER get together if they were single but they are still bound due to marriage, it is their personal responsibility to be in truth with what is going on. This truth needs to be not just with themselves but with the other person. If one person is willing to live a lie then the relationship will, inevitably suffer in some manner. A relationship needs to be based in honesty and truth for it to survive and be fulfilling and not empty.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.