Hi
M woman came back from holiday with my daughter i feel she has cheated while she was there even tho it was meant to be an official holiday with other people’s children.
—marc, DUBLIN
Dear Marc,
Suspecting infidelity is not the same as knowing it to be a fact. So, be very careful as the mind and heart can deceive you, too, not just your wife! This ASK service that we offer is no substitute for marriage counseling and as I do not know either of you personally I can only offer a few general suggestions:
1. Find a quiet, calm time (perhaps after the children are in bed or are out playing) to sit down with your wife and ask questions about her holiday trip. DO NOT ACCUSE. Simply ask questions about the trip. Depending on how this goes you can come to a point where you ask: “Is there anything you would like to tell me about this trip?” or, “Did you meet someone special there?” Or, “Are you unhappy in this marriage?” “Is there something I can do to make this marriage better?” “Do you think we should see a marriage counselor?”
2. Learn the difference between your feelings and your wife’s feelings or behavior. For example: you can make the statement “If you were to have an affair with another man, I would be very hurt. I hope this isn’t the case. Is it?”
3. Step back, if you can, from your own marriage and your suspicions and potential hurt to consider the broader picture of marriage and human nature: yogis say we have lived countless lifetimes and have had many partners. In the New Testament Jesus is asked a question about a hypothetical case when a woman, married and widowed repeatedly under the Judaic law, dies and goes to heaven, which husband will she reunite with? Jesus, perhaps with a bit of annoyance or a chuckle under his breath, tries to explain that the soul is neither male nor female and that in the after-death state of heaven (astral world) marriage in the earthly sense does not apply. There we meet friends and lovers and families from perhaps many lifetimes! Which one then is “our” wife? No one owns us and we own no one. No one “owes” us anything but to be true to themselves.
4. Human weakness in matters of passion and attraction are the stuff of literature and daily drama in the lives of countless people down through the ages. Try to be forgiving. Jesus reminds us that the law of karma is exacting for “as ye sow, so shall ye reap!” Who knows what act(s) you have done in the past, perhaps a past life, that would result in your wife’s infidelity to you? “There but for the grace of God, go I.” Studies of infidelity have shown that those who develop infidelity as a pattern are very unhappy people for they never can find true love that way. They are a bit like lost souls in a personal kind of hell where they have the karma to attract others of similar tendencies but never bond with any of them. Not unlike a movie of zombies roaming around, half-dead and more than half UNfulfilled! So be patient if you can; kind if you can.
5. You must also finally decide whether your marriage is worth doing the work necessary to salvage it. What if your wife denies infidelity but you continue to suspect it? This suspicion acts like a poison in the blood stream of marital love and respect. No matter what she says or what you actually know, you will have to work consciously and courageously to forgive and to go the extra steps to show respect, love, affection, and tenderness IF you want to save your marriage.
I hope these few words offer some guidance and hope and I wish for you both that this challenge act as a lever to strengthen your friendship with one another. Marriage, more than anything else, is friendship. Friendship is based on respect far more than the sentiments of romance and attraction between the sexes. Be, therefore, a true friend and true friendship must come to you!
Blessings and joy to you,
Nayaswami Hriman
