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Can Cheating Help Me Find Myself?
By no means an acceptable act, sexual and emotional infidelity destroys relationships and tears families apart. Your own personal experiences can attest to this information. Whether you were the cheating party, or the victim of infidelity, it can easily be said that affairs leave deadly consequences in its wake.
Since cheating can completely destroy lives, shouldn’t there be something worth learning from the experience? Besides learning that it sucks to hurt or be hurt by someone we love, are there any positive benefits to having an affair? Does sexual or emotional infidelity give birth to anything we can take with us through life?
The answer, depending on the circumstances, is yes. Yes, there are lessons learned from infidelity, and yes, one can truly benefit from cheating on someone.
Relationship expert Mira Kirshenbaum’s book, When Good People Have Affairs, discusses the alternative side of infidelity. Written for individuals currently involved in an affair, this nonjudgmental, informative book guides readers to sort out their affair and its aftermath in a carefully established order.
Affairs Help You Discover Who You Are
One part of Kirshenbaum’s candid book promotes the idea that affairs, in hindsight, teach us something about ourselves. People cheat in order to obtain something they feel they are lacking, usually within their primary relationships. A person might instantly know why they’re cheating, and others might not be so sure, yet simply have the understanding that things aren’t satisfying for them.
An affair helps you rediscover who you are. Even if you knew who you were two years ago, chances are you’re not the same person. In life, we’re constantly evolving, discovering new passions or reigniting those which lay dormant within. Though you may not have been actively seeking an affair, you might have found yourself drawn to someone whose passions or talents matched those you wished to pursue. Those shared interests created a bond that eventually led to bedroom.
One way to reflect upon a sexual affair with someone whose interests mirror long-lost dreams of your own is to believe that your relationship served to reunite you with the piece of you that was missing. Whether your affair involved a talented salsa partner who stimulated your desire to explore Latin culture, lustful make out sessions with a beautiful woman who indulged in your passion for foreign films, or simply paired you with a Greek god who coached you back into physical fitness, you were essentially reminded of something you’ve wanted or needed to do, yet ignored for a long time.
Real Love or Simply a Fringe Benefit?
Determining whether or not your affair partner shared a significant long-lasting opportunity with you is fairly easy. Simply consider whether that person’s presence made you feel more alive, and if they inspired you to be more of the person you want to be. Did this person remind you of who you wished to become?
Chances are, the answers to these questions are all yes, and in some form or fashion, this is indicative of your connection. However, this does not mean that the other person is meant for you, or that you’re even soul mates, so don’t confuse the pleasure within the affair as a passionate desire for your affair partner. Those intense feelings aren’t necessarily for that other person so much as it is for the fact that you’ve been reunited with a long repressed part of yourself.
If you’ve returned to your spouse after cheating on them, and feel a sense of yearning for that other person, consider whether it’s the shared interest in certain activities you long for. Consider making the interest or hobby a regular part of your renewed relationship with your spouse – and even if you find you can’t, find some way to add it to your life. The fact that you were willing to risk hurting others for it establishes how important that activity is to your happiness.
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