Who Does Infidelity Affect?
- Details
- October 29, 2018
It’s not just the betrayed spouse who suffers.
Few things are as rending to love, let alone marriage, than the scourge of infidelity. But besides the jilted spouse, who does infidelity affect?
There is no question that infidelity undermines the very foundation of committed love. It wipes out trust and replaces it with shame, embarrassment, anger, depression, and often irrevocable loss of intimacy.
When a spouse cheats, the question of “Who does infidelity affect?” is rarely the frame of reference for the choice to stray.
Being self-consumed with one’s own needs and/or lack of fulfillment in the marriage can blind one to the harm done to others. It can even blind one to the long-term harm to oneself.
Who does infidelity affect? It affects far more than you would think, including family and friends close to the marriage.
But the most sensitive barometers of change, especially change that “doesn’t feel right,” are children.
They may not have finely honed communication skills or the authority to make life decisions, but children are incredibly perceptive. And what they perceive becomes formative in their neurological and emotional development.
The emotional reaction to parental infidelity is similar to the reaction to parental divorce...except deeper, and with potentially more…
