Do Not Take Your Marriage For Granted

It’s the Ok marriage that often leads to pain.

I have to warn you.

I am seeing an increase in clients who discover their partners are having sexting affairs.

Just in case you don’t know, Sexting is the texting of images and/or words that are sexually explicit.

Imagine that you discover your partner has been sexting with another person. You pick up their phone and see nude images and words to describe a variety of sexual acts that your spouse wants to have with this other person.

You’re not going to feel good about it.

Sometimes the sexting is rationalized as; they didn’t have physical sex, and it’s really not that big a deal. Sometimes the sexting they admit has been going on for years.

You’re definitely not going to like that.

Other times the sexting is the tip of the iceberg to a full blown affair that has been going on for a long time.

Now you’ll have to decide what you are going to do.

In every one of these situations that I deal with, I always ask about the state of the marriage before these affairs were discovered.

In almost everyone one of these situations, the marriages are described as Ok, or alright.

Here’s the ugly truth:

When I dig deeper, the marriages were far from Ok or being alright. Most of these people who have been betrayed admit that they had thought about getting a divorce years prior to the acts I’ve mentioned, but things were mostly Ok so they didn’t.

Couples are all too often sleep walking through life together, and the discovery of sexting and physical affairs is the brutal wake up call.

In my opinion, the sexting and the affairs are all symptoms of a marriage that has been struggling for some time. But the partners didn’t see any urgency to fix it and things seemed mostly Ok.

Please be smart:

Can you access your partner’s phone? Will they happily give you their smartphone and password?

This should not create a disagreement. If you are in happy, deeply connected, and trust filled relationship, there will never be an issue using your partner’s phone.

My wife has access to my smart phone any time she wants. She uses it often even though she has her own phone, which she can’t find from time to time. And I have access to my wife’s phone and password.

I want it to be that way. There is no valid reason on earth why I would need to hide my phone from her, nor should she feel the need to hide her phone and password from me.  The moment that occurs, trust has been lost, and the relationship despite all good appearances, is entering dysfunction.

If you find resistance to being able to access your partner’s phone please share this article with them.

If your marriage is simply Ok, or less than Ok, I urge you to reach out for help.

An Ok marriage is always on the edge of not being Ok.  An Ok marriage will not become happy, or great, or even good by itself. There is no upside to an OK marriage without effort to change it.

Without help very little happiness is possible.

 

 

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It’s not. –Dr Seuss