You don’t have to be the Houston marriage counselor to know that cheating is destructive and will cause a lot of relationship issues between you and your partner. After all, you’re basically telling them that what they’re offering you isn’t enough to keep you happy and satisfied. Moreover, people who cheat are almost always doing it behind their partner’s back, so it can absolutely destroy trust and connectedness.
Still, cheating doesn’t have to be the end, and there are a lot of myths out there about it.
Cheating Myths from the Houston Marriage Counselor
Want to separate fact from fiction? Here are some of the most prevalent cheating myths that are floating around out there:
You can’t fix your marriage after an affair. As someone who does exactly that for a living, I beg to differ. In fact, I’ve actually worked with some couples whose relationship has gotten stronger after one of them cheated and they decided to go to counseling to work on their marriage.
You need to reveal all of the details to your spouse. The problem with this logic is that the need to divulge everything isn’t about giving your spouse what they need to move past the affair, it’s about unburdening yourself of the lies. In short, it’s self-serving. What you do need to do is tell them everything that they want to know without hesitation, no matter how painful it is.
Relationship issues cause cheating. This one is interesting, because it’s sometimes sort of true, and sometimes not true at all. There are people out there who simply have personalities that lead them to cheat, and it doesn’t really matter how well their “real” relationship is going. However, while cheating is never caused by relationship issues, they can lead to cheating. It happens when your issues push you and your spouse further and further apart until you start craving connectedness from someone else.
It’s not cheating if you do it online. An emotional affair that includes online flirting, picture-sharing, and even cybersex may not seem “real,” but it still causes many of the same emotions. And emotional affairs can be just as devastating as physical ones.
The Houston Marriage Counselor Can Help You Heal
I’m not going to lie – if you’ve cheated on your spouse or have been cheated on, you have a rough road ahead. Trust and affection have to be rebuilt, and that’s something that just won’t happen without a lot of time and effort being put in. It’s also incredibly difficult to do on your own, so you would be wise to seek out the help of a Houston marriage counselor as soon as possible to guide you both on this journey.
