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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a divorce lawyer, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news…. but if you’re in a sex-starved marriage and not working on it, someone else is probably working on your partner. Especially if it’s a man. It’s not always about bad people doing bad things. It’s often about people who never learned how to talk about desire.

Humans need touch, connection, and sometimes variety. Those are hard conversations to have, but avoiding them doesn’t make the needs go away. Maybe what one partner wants isn’t okay for the other, and that’s fine. What’s not fine is pretending the issue doesn’t exist.

Most affairs don’t start with the intent to hurt. They start with silence. We’re not taught to talk about sex or unmet needs, so things fester until someone looks elsewhere for what’s missing. I see it across every walk of life, pastors, doctors, teachers, bankers.

The betrayal still hurts.[b] But it’s usually born out of neglect, not malice.[/b] The fix isn’t judgment, it’s learning to have the uncomfortable conversations before someone else fills the void.[/quote] 
 
Interesting how you change the lens from not being able to have a hard conversation to "neglect" which implies that one partner is failing to do something that they are obligated to do -- provide sex or intimacy.

I deeply disagree with this.  No one is entitled to sex, not even a married person.  If you are old enough to be married, you are old enough to learn how to have the hard conversations.  Yes, some people fail at having the hard conversations, and so in that sense infidelity is a failure on the part of the cheating spouse not to articulate needs in words and negotiate as to how the needs can be reasonably be met with the agreement of both partners.

While the act of infidelity may not have been out of malice, the act of hiding it, lying about it and gaslighting your partner about it is absolutely manipulative and malicious.  While honesty is difficult, lying and gaslighting is a conscious choice by the cheating spouse to manipulate the victim spouse into not ending the relationship because the cheating spouse gets some kind of benefit they don't want to give up but would have to if the victim spouse otherwise knew.[/quote]

I completely understand where you’re coming from and you’re right that no one is ever entitled to sex or intimacy. Cheating is a choice, and the lying or gaslighting that often follows is deeply harmful and manipulative.

When I talk about “neglect,” I don’t mean obligation…. I mean the slow, mutual drift that happens when couples stop being emotionally honest with each other. That silence doesn’t excuse betrayal, but it’s often what makes betrayal possible.

Accountability matters. But focusing only on blame ignores the patterns that make this so common…… shame, avoidance, and the inability to talk about uncomfortable needs before they fester. Understanding those dynamics isn’t minimizing the pain; it’s how we prevent it.

Relationships are complicated, and perfection is impossible. People change, needs evolve, and even good partners stumble. The goal isn’t to justify bad choices it’s to face reality: honesty, even when it’s messy, is the only real safeguard against heartbreak.[/quote]

This all sounds nice, but the kind of person that cheats is, by definition, the kind of person who can’t have an honest conversation, so I’m not sure that’s a reasonable expectation either before or after infidelity.  I also think it’s a mistake to characterize all infidelity as the result of some kind of neglectful drift apart.  There are many men, pathological or merely conditioned by society, who expect to get what they want when they want it and for women (wives and APs) to facilitate their desires, whatever they may be.  Perhaps there are women like this too - pathological or conditioned by society to see their value in their attraction.

Again interesting how you shift language from “accountability matters” to “but focusing only on blame”.  Insisting someone take accountability for their actions isn’t blame. It is the core of honesty - if you can’t say what you did and accept that your actions have consequences, there is no honesty.[/quote]

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