25 Dec To forgive & forget until death do us apart
I don’t get easily offended, mostly because I’m so distracted in my own world that most indiscretions and rudeness go over my head. I also don’t have too much of a hard time forgiving, but that’s mostly because I have the memory of a paper bag and after some time I totally forget the offending act.
Having said that, I do have a hard time forgiving what I consider grave offences, especially those committed by people I love. Even if memory is kind to me and obliterates the offence from my mind, the feeling of distrust and antipathy towards the offender remains almost indefinitely. I am therefore in awe of people who manage to forgive their partners of actions that I’d consider complete deal breakers. I don’t understand how a wife can live with her husband’s repeated infidelity or how a boyfriend can live with his girlfriend’s continuous experimentation with other women.
I especially don’t see how people can get over emotional betrayals; how people, men and women alike, get over not only sexual infidelity but more importantly infidelity of the heart and mind. For the purpose of this article I asked friends and acquaintances what they would be ready to close an eye to in order to save their relationship. The revelations were mind blowing, ranging from finding somebody else’s underpants on the back seat of a car, to calling off a wedding on a hunch. Charmaine* has been married for the past 10 years. She’s clearly in love with her husband and adores her little daughter. She looks happy and I have no reason to doubt her smile, even when she tells me that she’s fully aware that her husband sleeps around.
“He goes abroad almost every month,” she explains, “the first time I found out that he was getting his fill every time he leaves the island I almost had a meltdown. But he then explained that for him, getting it on with someone else is the equivalent of going to a good restaurant for a god meal. He explained that it’s just another pleasure of life that no matter how hard I tried, as his wife I couldn’t provide because I could never be ‘new’ again. At first I a very hard time understanding him but today, almost five years after I found out I can vouch that it doesn’t affect our relationship at all, or rather I don’t let it. I used to be worried sick that during one of his escapades my husband would find someone special and leave me, but given that so much time has passed and our relationship is still strong, I’ve now learnt how to treat his indiscretions with a pinch of salt.”
Last year Michael* was about to get married to the woman of his dreams. Just two and a halve months before the wedding the bride-to-be suddenly got cold feet. “She started accusing me of having an affair with someone else,” explains Michael. “In my head it wasn’t true because I had not been physical with the person in question but even though I swore on my life that nothing had happened, my girlfriend couldn’t live with her suspicions so we broke up and called off the wedding. In hindsight, I know that she was right, because although I had not touched the other person (yet) it was only a matter of time. My emotions were all over the place. I was thorn between these two women and had I gone through with the wedding, I would have made the biggest mistake of my life. I’ve now learnt that betrayal can take different forms, and that there need not be any physical contact for it to occur.” Daniela* doesn’t believe in monogamy.
She thinks that it’s unnatural and that it’s particularly hard for men to adapt to this social arrangement. “I’m pretty monogamous when I’m in a relationship,” explains Daniela, “but when I’m involved with a man I kind of feel guilty imposing monogamy on him. With women, it’s different, I don’t believe that it’s that difficult for women to stay faithful to their partners, the sexual urge is just not that strong, at least not with the majority of us women, but men are just wired differently. I’ve been in relationships with both men and women, and I’ve forgiven men for many sexual indiscretions, but I don’t accept it from a woman.
For me, when a woman is unfaithful, it means that she’s emotionally involved. I still have to meet a woman who can separate sex and emotions, at least not in the long run. On the contrary, I know many men who can easily keep things separate, and this is why I don’t struggle with accepting sexual indiscretions from men, but absolutely abhor then from women.” John* had been dating Lara* for ten years. They were childhood sweethearts and as far as he was concerned they were made for each other. “Soul mates, that’s what we are,” he says, “and no matter what happens, no matter whether we will eventually work out or not, I will always have a special place in my heart for her.”
A couple of years ago, John was clearing the back seat of Lara’s car to make room for a new TV set that they had just bought and were about to take home. As he was hastily making space for the TV set, he picked up what looked like female lingerie. “I didn’t think much of it at the time, and just shoved it under the seat, but then when we got home it kind of hit me. You see, Lara does not own any lingerie and it’s something I’ve always loved about her; she doesn’t try too hard to be sexy and prefers the simpler things in life. She’s more into the tomboy kind of style, which quite frankly drives me crazy. So what were those red lacey panties doing on her back seat?
I let it be for a while but then I just couldn’t keep it in for much longer; it was driving me crazy so I confronted her about it. She acted like she had no idea what I was talking about and when I took her down to the car, pulled out the culprit from under the seat and shoved it in her face, she burst out laughing hysterically. She said that the panties were from hen’ s night she had attended earlier that year but when I questioned whose hen’s night it was, she fumbled a bit too much for my liking.
Lara is in the catering business and she caters for such events but she usually remembers every single client by name; in this case, she couldn’t and that triggered the alarm bells in my head. She also claimed not to have found a paper trail, some kind of written record of the job. Eventually we broke up because I couldn’t live with the thought that she might have betrayed me, with a woman especially, but then we made up again and we’re still together. The issue does come up every now and then especially when I see her getting too close to one of her girlfriends. Even though she keeps insisting she is not attracted to women, the thought still nags at me and is always at the back of my mind.”
According to Psychiatrist Dr. Anton Grech (Chairman of Mental Health Services in the Department of Health and, Senior Lecturer at The University of Malta) ‘open’ relationships are not healthy and the reasons why some people tolerate their partner’s sexual indiscretions can be extremely variable. “The psychological make-up of every individual varies immensely and it is impossible to explain why people behave the way they do. However, I think that there are three reasons that are particularly more common than others:
1.Inappropriate use of the defense mechanism known as ‘denial’. In certain situations and for short periods of time ‘denying’ that there is a problem can be helpful; it’s a defense mechanism that our mind uses to protect us from shock; but in the long term continuing to ‘deny’ a situation is not healthy.
2. Difficulty moving on. Another common reason for staying in an unhealthy relationship is fear of moving on. Re- starting life as a single person can be emotionally taxing and it also brings with it logistical changes that some people find too big a challenge to face, so in order to maintain the status quo they prefer to tolerate infidelity in their relationship.
3. Unrealistic expectations. Some people have unrealistic expectations that their partner will change. Whilst generally speaking people have the capacity to change, some do not want to change and certain innate characteristics of our personality are very difficult to eradicate completely. This means that we need to keep our feet on the ground and not expect people to change too drastically or too quickly. We also need to recognize when it’s time to stop expecting said change. According to Dr. Grech, there should be a limit as to how much we should be ready to forgive and how long to keep expecting a relationship to return to a healthy state. “Love is a very beautiful thing, and to forgive the person you love is positive, but we should not use the excuse of ‘love’ in order to justify an unrealistic view of our relationship. If we do, reality will eventually catch up with us and we will still be forced to face the music.”
