(Today, I am addressing affairs and character. This is not about the motivations for affairs or what the causes are. The focus is on cheating and character.)
Character matters, especially when it comes to affairs. When you cheat, you take something that does not belong to you. You violate the boundaries of your marriage vows. You betray your spouse. If you made your vows to God, you have betrayed him with your breaking your word. Broken promises are often excused in business with phrases like “it’s just business”. Excuses are often used in courtrooms to justify wicked acts, with the more eloquent ones being rewarded by winning the case.
Since many of the courts have stooped to operating more like a supermarket where rulings are for sale based on who has the better paid lawyers, you may think that you can do the same in your marriage. Society often rewards those who have better excuses with judgements in their favor. That does not make them right or just.
Judges may say you are not at fault for divorce. They may say that what you did was ‘justified’, but it still does not make it right.
You can make excuses about how ‘justified’ or excusable the affair was. Those excuses may help you ease your conscience. Even though you have bought the excuses, it does make what you did okay. Affairs are still bad behavior, no matter how much Hollywood and the porn industry have polished it up.
No amount of excuses can remove the wrongness of what happened.
An affair means that your morals can be bought. It also means that you are not a person who can be counted on to keep your word or do the right thing. It means that your passions have trumped your promises.
When a man or woman can not control their passions, they are vulnerable. They can be manipulated and controlled by others. You can not count on them delivering what they promise or standing by what they say. This is one of the reasons they can not be fully trusted.
Sure, cheaters and Swingers insist that they are ‘good’ people. They often react with passion to accusations about how they are not ‘good’. When you accuse them of not being good, they often have vehement reactions. The weird aspect is that if you say that they did something bad, or wrong, they do not react as strongly. It is when you say that they are NOT good that the reactions occur.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
