Finding out that your spouse has been unfaithful can hit you like a punch to the gut, leaving you breathless and overwhelmed with a mix of emotions, from sadness and anger to confusion and disbelief.
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Reddit user Puzzleheaded_Ear2706 was no exception. Her marriage was thrown into crisis, and she felt she couldn't salvage it. So, the woman decided to break up with her husband.
However, as she explained in a post on r/AITAH, the man's family thought she was making a mistake.
This woman made her husband's affair public and decided to break up with him
Image credits:LightFieldStudios (Not the actual photo)
But his relatives insisted she was overreacting and urged her to reconsider
Image credits:voronaman111 (Not the actual photo)
Image credits:Puzzleheaded_Ear2706
The conflict, first and foremost, is between her and her partner
Infidelity is one of the leading causes of divorce, with 60% of couples citing a partner's unfaithfulness as a reason their union ended.
To better understand this affair, Bored Panda contacted clinical psychologist Michael Karson, PhD, JD, ABPP, who is a retired professor from the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology, and had practiced clinical and forensic psychology for 25 years before entering the academic world.
"If you're looking for signs [of whether or not your partner's cheating], there's already a problem," Karson, who also co-authored the book Patterns of Child Abuse: How Dysfunctional Transactions Are Replicated in Individuals, Families, and the Child Welfare System, told us. "[In this case,] the couple needs to discuss, perhaps with a therapist, what their goals and expectations are."
"The idea that it's better for the kids to grow up in a suspicious, passive-aggressive household in order to look stereotypical is very sad, and it is not conclusive but it certainly makes me wonder if the cheater's family helped produce a cheater by championing mock marriages rather than real marriages," he added.
"I have found that a lot of cheaters can get what cheating got them from flirting. More than a few couples have agreed that they are allowed to flirt as long as the person they are flirting with can't tell they're flirting."
"When the person they are flirting with then expresses overt interest, it's a kind of conquest. This is only one example of trying to get some of the needs met in a different way that doesn't threaten the partnership," the psychologist said.
According to him if sexual competence, teamwork, and honesty are important to a person, as they are to most people, the cheating can be devastating to one's well-being and their sense of belonging in the marriage. So can we really judge the author of the post for leaving?
"[The help that she might need] depends on the details, but a good place to start would be [for all of us to] move toward experiencing the cheater as humiliated because of their lack of impulse control rather than experiencing the other partner as humiliated."
Image credits:1footage (Not the actual photo)
As the story went viral, its author gave more information in the comments
People were absolutely shocked by the husband's behavior
