When the news of Jeffrey Epstein’s demise broke, it was all you heard about that weekend. His life and his death are surrounded by secrecy and intrigues.
In reading through the accounts of what happened, it occurred to me that there are lessons about infidelity to be gained from the life of Jeffrey Epstein. Those lessons could help you and your marriage.
1) One is that money doesn’t shield you from the consequences of affairs. His money and connections shielded him for a while, but eventually it caught up with him. His money bought only temporary secrecy at best.
Eventually the secrets come out. The more people involved, the greater the likelihood the secrets will come out. What’s done in secret will eventually come to light.
Consider how ancestry.com and other genetic tests are now showing a new generation who their parents really are.
Not only did Epstein’s secrets come out, the secrets of others have started coming out as well. It’s noteworthy that with all his powerful connected friends who participated with him in his sexual escapades, none were able to save him from the consequences of his actions.
Another part of the consequences is that you run out of places to hide. Although he had private islands, and connections around the world, there was no place for him to hide from the consequences.
Once again, the statement of Moses is proven correct. “Your sins will find you out”.
2) The second lesson is that once a person starts on the road to sexual addiction, it leads to increasing excesses. Ignoring a sexual addiction doesn’t make it go away.
When such addictions are ignored, they only continue growing in size and frequency. His passions influenced greater amounts of his daily decision making and daily activity.
When allowed to continue, it becomes the main part of your life, like it did his. Once his sexual addictions were just an interest. They eventually became the main focus of his life, to where he had to have three orgasms a day and had unusual sexual tastes. His sensual appetite grew in size and intensity to where it was beyond his control.
Make no mistake, the sexually addicted brain has experiences permanent alterations. The addiction is not a temporary state, it’s a long term change.
3) Thirdly, although he was arrested and served time for prostitution related charges and was a registered sex offender, it didn’t stop him. The punishment of jail time didn’t stop his sexual appetite. Punishment isn’t the solution to sexual addictions.
So if you’ve been shielding your spouse from the consequences of their actions, you haven’t been doing them any favors.
4) A fourth item is that Jeffrey Epstein was originally a school teacher before he went into finance. In some of my posts, I’ve addressed the higher risk that comes with these vocations.
He stayed in a vocation where he could indulge in his passions. With money he could indulge himself in what he wasn’t allowed to do as a school teacher. Professions with large amounts of money combined with sexual desires like Epstein’s are a dangerous mix.
What this means for your marriage is that the affair is a warning sign. That warning sign is alerting you to danger ahead.
If your spouse is in a high-risk profession, or one with large amounts of unstructured time or fast cash, you are in a potential danger zone.
Ignoring the warning signs only means the problem is going to grow larger over time. Keeping the cheater’s secrets only allows the problem to metastasize.
If you or your spouse are caught up in an affair situation, the time to deal with it is now. Rather than put it off to a more convenient time, it’s more critical to deal with it now.
The Affair Recovery Workshop guides you and your spouse in dealing with the burgeoning situation. You can know what to talk about, how to bypass defensiveness and ways of grabbing your spouse’s attention.
Your marriage needs some changes. Instead of guessing about what needs to change, you can know for sure where and what needs attention for long term results.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
