Your Best Behavior Really Is Best

PAST

(This post is a little facetious…but only a little.)

So you’re interested in somebody married. They’re interested in you. Why is it a good idea to be On Your Best Behavior? (i.e., NOT sleeping with the person, NOT dating the person, NOT taking the emotional place of their spouse in online conversations, etc. In other words, “I’m interested, but I won’t do ANYTHING with you unless/until you are no longer married.”)

1.)    You really don’t, you really don’t, you REALLY DON’T, have ANY CLUE what kind of emotional or psychological problems this person has. For instance, if he’s a sex addict, along the lines of Anthony Weiner or yesteryear’s J.R. Ewing, you will get USED and LEFT.

2.)    If you compete with the spouse, and that person finds out their husband/wife is cheating with you, you are prompting better behavior on the part of that spouse. Assuming your beloved is NOT a sex addict, serial womanizer, or just plain psychopath, they want to be with you because they are not happy at home. Now the spouse knows, and will clean up his/her act, at least until you are a memory. Let that spouse hang themselves, please. If your beloved can’t leave because every time he or she tries, the spouse becomes more loving again, finds some way to blame your beloved for all the problems, and your beloved feels guilty, don’t prompt that spouse to be loving! Let that person be their real self. 

3.)    Now the spouses go to marriage counseling. Now you’ve just prolonged the marriage. Especially in the case where it’s clear someone is experiencing out-of-this-world cruel or unusual behavior and that person really should be getting their ass out of there!

4.)    As detailed in this post, if the spouses should really stay together, you won’t win anyway. You’ve just broken your own heart, and you’ve damaged the marriage possibly forever.

5.)    If your beloved is running around cheating with you, you are asking that person for dishonest behavior and promoting poor relationship habits. If this person has problems in this area anyway, you are making them worse. But, should you win the person away from the spouse, what do you need? You need honest behavior and good relationship habits. And, for the entire period of the affair, you’ve been asking for exactly the opposite.

6.)    If your beloved is cheating, chances are that person is having a hard time being him/herself authentically in his/her life. This is a serious life problem that one day that person will have to confront and solve if ever they’re going to be happy. You are allowing that person to bleed off the pressure to do this. Why should they confront hard questions about their personal happiness, their spouse, their marriage, what they want for their life, and their own behavior? They can masquerade to friends and family that everything is fine, and then come get their intimate needs met with you. Where is the impetus for them to confront and make constructive changes in their life? You just took that away. You’re making dysfunction easy for them and enabling them to continue a pattern that hurts them, the spouse, and you.