25 October 2017

In our overly sexualized culture, where women are portrayed as nothing more than sex objects in the media and men are programmed from a very young age to consider the females in their lives as sort of sidebars to their pursuit of a career, it is no wonder so many men struggle to stay loyal to the woman they marry or move in with.

To be fair, not all men think this way. Not all men seek out to just work hard, make a lot of money, move up in their career and have a woman to come home to who has prepared a meal, cleaned the house, taken care of the needs of children, plus most likely also tended to her own work for the day, and also make herself available to meet the sexual desires of her spouse. Not all men accept the common culture programming which permeates our day-to-day existence. But many men do. Really. A lot of men do.

Is it any wonder then, in this high stressed environment with pressures from every side that men and women do not stay loyal to the person they committed themselves to? It’s like we are trained to think of ourselves as consumers in this materialistic culture of New Products. Since women are just portrayed as objects to have sex with, then why wouldn’t a man go looking to have sex with others if the one closest to him isn’t turning him on as much as before? When our car gets old and need of repair we seek out to replace it. Why not replace a woman in bed too? When a relationship gets old and when work is needed to go into emotional depth and emotional intimacy many men just don’t know how so they go out looking for a superficial fix to the problem instead of doing the inner work needed for transformation.

To be fair, this is not true of all men. And sometimes women are the ones not being loyal. But that is not what this article is about. This is addressing the prominent issue of men who are conditioned from a young age to sexualize the women in their lives and who cannot stay loyal to one woman.

So what can men and women do to solve this? What can be done?

The key to moving forward after someone is not loyal in a relationship is to remember there are more options than just “breaking up.” In other words, just because someone does something others may call cheating, does not mean things are over. It might be over. But it might not be. It depends on the situation and the depth of the relationship.

What you can do if someone you are in a close personal & physical relationship with decides to sleep with someone else is consider what is going on in the relationship which led the person to take that action?

If you know your partner well, and you know he is not malicious and he is not cruel-hearted and seeking to hurt or manipulate you with his negative action then you may be able to support him through the emotional growth ready to emerge after he slept with someone who wasn’t his partner.

Growing through this together can actually strengthen the depth of the relationship and can bring the two together more than anything else could. This negative situation can be flipped to positive by having Patience, Compassion and Determination.

So long as both parties really want the relationship. It can be repaired and can recover in time.

An approach like this requires a somewhat radical look at a relationship and on the possibilities for endless outcomes of a situation. The point is that the solution after such a break of trust does not need to be a break up entirely. Conversation and communication between two mature adults can open the doors for any number of outcomes and one of those potential outcomes is that a relationship can be sustained even after he sleeps with someone else.

The key is to go slow. To feel the negatives. To let the emotions out and process them in a healthy way. Then real growth can  happen which could lead the couple to more happiness than they ever imagined.