Affairs come home to roost

Over the past few weeks, news of celebrity affairs has been in the headlines. Included in the list are the Kardashians, the Duggars, the Clintons and others. If that is not enough, there is also the constant public relations campaign of Ashley Madison in their efforts to revive their empire.

I find it oddly ironic that many of the cheaters who had secret relationships that were covered with lies are now filing lawsuits against the company that also lied to them and kept secrets. Cheaters do not want to be cheated on. Isn’t that ironic? And the dislike of disloyalty is not limited to Ashley Madison. Consider how some of those same politicians who cheated will not tolerate disloyalty to them.

Even when the affairs are over, the reminders of them often stain the celebrity’s reputation for years or even generations to come. Although the cheater wishes that all they had to do was apologize to you and then all will be fine, when it comes to affairs, it is not that easy.

One of the reasons for this is that affairs are about betrayal. When you are betrayed, you are lied to. Your loyalty has been exploited. You have been played and made a fool of. Since marriage vows are public declarations of life-long fidelity, the betrayal also has a public component. Cheaters want to keep their broken vows between adults, yet breaking a vow they made in public is a matter for all concerned.

When a cheater breaks their vow to you—their spouse, who is supposedly their closest confidant—what is to stop them from breaking their promises to others? The answer is…nothing. Once they have crossed that line, it is no big deal to break other promises.

One of the ways cheaters deal with this is to shift “intentions.” They distract your attention away from what they did and attempt to point out what they intended or did not intend to do. It is as if intent counter-balances their actions.

In the case of celebrities, and especially politicians, the character aspects are minimized and sometimes even hidden from the public. The politicians do not want you to realize that if they were not loyal to their spouse, what is to keep them from being disloyal to you? For this reason, affairs are often brought out to sink other candidates, and hidden from exposure by others.

What the politicians do not want you to realize is that, when they have affairs, they not only have character issues, but also weak if not non-existent self-control. Those with affairs also have secrets that other politicians exploit to gain leverage and control over them. The people who clean up and cover up the affairs come at a cost. The politicians are often indebted to them for a long time.

Some exploiters actually want politicians to have affairs, and often offer them on silver platters to potential office holders. This way, they can gain leverage over the politician by having a secret to hold over them. The politicians, in their lust for power, see the affairs as “perks” and do not realize that they are being played.

Cheaters often assume that “what they do not see, won’t hurt them.” They think that an unseen affair is one that is non-existent. They do not realize that the compromise they made with their affair was also a breaking and weakening of their soul.

Affairs are often shortsighted decisions. The cheater often thinks of their immediate gratification, rather than the long-term impact. Perhaps this is why celebrities and politicians are prone to affairs. They are used to giving the people and themselves what they want, quickly, with little or no regard for the long-term impact or “who” is going to have to be paid for what happened.

Make no mistake—someone always has to pay for the affair. There is always a price tag. The price tag also includes the impact it will have on relationships, trust, character and honesty. Once character has been damaged, it is not one of those things you can just throw money at and fix. Cheaters are often looking for quick fixes to their affairs, and find anyone to blame but themselves.

My own suspicion is that cheaters looking for quick fixes and avoiding blame was a driving force behind “no-fault” divorce laws. By taking out “fault” (adultery being one of the faults), there is no one to blame for the divorce. The cheater can dump their spouse without having the “bad” label attached to them. They can then say, “It was nobody’s fault. We just did not get along with each other,” or some other lame excuse, rather than honestly saying, “I could not stay loyal to my spouse and kept sleeping around.”

Eventually, news of the affair will come out. When it does, it stains their reputation at that time and throughout the future. That little peccadillo that they thought made them more of a man or woman at the time is viewed as weakness by future generations. Being shortsighted, they did not consider that possibility, or simply did not care.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah