Serial Cheaters & Repeated Marital Infidelity – 6 Issues {Couples} Should Know | Mary Ellen Goggin Jerry Duberstein
The idea of surviving repeated infidelity in your marriage likely never pinged your blissful connubial radar. But here you are dealing with your spouse being a serial cheater.
There was a time when even one indiscretion would have killed your trust and your marriage. A one-night stand, a long-term scandal – that wouldn’t have mattered.
A blown bubble is a blown bubble. Poof. Path.
Repeated or serial infidelity can occur in a number of ways.
The unfaithful spouse may have a number of secret trysts with different partners – a pattern of one-nighters or work-trip rendezvouses.
You can get caught up in a long-term affair that will eventually end. Then start the unfaithful behavior again after appearing to be remorseful and repentant for a comforting period of time.
The serial cheater can also have the pattern of leaving a committed relationship for an affair partner and then doing it again … and over and over.
It could also be a combination of the above.
What matters is that the infidelity doesn’t turn around without looking back.
It is as if the fraudulent spouse is never entirely convinced that the coveted elixir of life is not outside of their marriage vows.
Suddenly all of the agony and labor that it takes to survive the infidelity in your marriage “just once” seems like a farce. Another lie, just like your entire marriage.
How could you think differently?
But it’s never that simple – it never is love. Relationships are never.
Below are 6 things couples need to know about repeated infidelity or serial cheating.
1. Past behavior is a good indication of future behavior.
This maxim requires an easy step, as it could be mistaken for an explanation of the futility of a marriage in crisis. But we’re talking about repeated infidelity here. And the nature of “repetition” implies a pattern of behavior.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant differentiates between two obstacles to morality: affect and passion.
In simple terms, affect involves the direct movement from feeling to action. There is no intermediate reflection or a deliberate choice.
Passion, on the other hand, implies an actual perversion of choice. There is reflection. And there is an erosion of the decision-making process.
While the effects are fleeting, and quickly hit the groundwork and moral comparisons that had bypassed them for the moment, the passions are different. They are the derivatives of desire, not of feeling.
They change the person’s judgment and thus the path of feeling and inclination to act. In this way, they create the conditions for the future transformation of behavior and character.
It is a deeply philosophical argument, to be sure, but there is ample evidence to support the idea that “once a cheater, always a cheater” persists.
2. Remorse and remorse have nothing to do with the basic problem.
If your marriage has survived the infidelity, you know the importance of the unfaithful spouse’s remorse and remorse in their healing.
But once the infidelity adds up, no level of regret and remorse can fix the problem. The problem is the problem.
For example, an addict may feel sad and complacent each time they relapse. But not changing a lot of apologies and promises addresses the problem underlying the behavior.
The person who cheats has to be willing to go where they don’t want to go. Investigate the untestable. Experience the fear of plunging into the void he or she has tried to fill from the surface of life.
As hard as it sounds, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
3. Serial scammers don’t believe the rules apply to them.
It’s always someone else’s fault. There is a spouse who is not interested in sex, who nags, or who no longer kindles the cheater’s fire. There is always a circumstance that is inevitable, a need to indulge in.
If the rules don’t apply to you and it is someone else’s fault, the chances are slim that you will be doing the hard work on yourself. Your excuses and justifications are too valuable.
4. The betrayed spouse suffers extreme emotional and even physiological damage.
The effects of infidelity on the betrayed spouse cannot be overstated. Loss of self-esteem, self-worth, confidence, hope, focus, confidence. The disruption of sleep, food, work, and relationships.
Surviving repeated infidelity can be too much for the betrayed spouse in the context of marriage.
But if the two of you decide to give your marriage another chance, there must be uncompromising compassion for the emotional wounds of the betrayed.
5. The steps in the healing process are the same for serial infidelity as they are for infidelity.
The questions don’t change. Is the unfaithful partner really repentant? Is he or she ready to get help and get the job done?
Is the unfaithful partner willing to be transparent and accountable?
Do you still love your spouse, whether you are the betrayed or the cheating spouse?
Healing and reparation can never occur without uncompromising, even painful, transparency and accountability from the unfaithful spouse.
And the betrayed spouse must be ready to forgive and move forward in a timely manner.
6. To survive repeated infidelity together means to make a new connection.
Their marriage will never be the same as it was when she still had the innocence of fidelity. It has already turned for the worse.
Surviving as a couple means your marriage must now change for the better and for the better.
You must decide that you will move on with a painful truth in your story and a readiness for recreation in your future.
You will essentially remarry, but with an inseparable story woven into your vows.
Is it possible to fix a marriage after a serial cheater’s repeated infidelity?
So you are looking for hope that it is even possible to survive repeated infidelity and a serial cheater.
Is it possible for you? More importantly, is it possible (or even desirable – or wise) for your marriage?
And if you wake up from the nightmare with a pulse, what should you do? What do you need to know about surviving a long-term infidelity in your marriage?
And if you are the serial cheater …
So far it is assumed that you are the betrayed spouse. But you can be the unfaithful partner grappling with a pattern of decisions that are fraught with character and relational morbidity.
You might want to stop this runaway train. Perhaps you are in an undercurrent of addictive behavior and have no idea how to take your foot off the accelerator.
Perhaps you are just as scared as your betrayed spouse.
And maybe you have no idea how angry you are deep down inside. And your spouse is so scared that anger is the only means to get through the emotional paralysis.
As difficult as it is for a couple to survive an affair, so often it is swimming outward at high tide. Serial cheating, regardless of its form or frequency, suggests a much deeper problem that has not been resolved.
And ultimately, neither spouse – let alone marriage – can survive without willingly plunging into the dark abyss of relentless trial.
If you and your spouse are to survive the repeated infidelity in your marriage, there are a few things you need to know. There is no formula for surviving infidelity, let alone surviving repeated infidelity.
But in the possibility (or impossibility) there is “survival”. And you must survive … and will. Maybe together. Maybe apart.
In either case, your infidelity survival calls you to a fully explored life.
It also calls you to the best, most hopeful version of yourself.
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Mary Ellen Goggin offers relationship coaching for individuals and works with her partner Dr. Jerry Duberstein to offer retreats to private couples. To learn more about working with Mary Ellen, schedule a half-hour free consultation.
This article was originally published on Free And Connected. Reprinted with permission from the author.
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