Marriage tip four: We will get straight to the point..for goodness sake set some boundaries; know what your limits are with infidelity…because lets face it…when the reality comes we have two separate lives. He lives there we live here for six months of the time, well for me anyway. So find out what’s okay and what’s not okay. Flirting, kissing, sex? Don’t be afraid to talk about it having ‘the chat’ it puts so much stuff at ease. It doesn’t jinx your relationship if you have trouble well maybe your already in trouble. What it does do is helps stops with over thinking, helps with the whole trust issue and who hasn’t dealt with that? That my friends can be such a pain in the derriere.
It’s something my husband and I discussed early on in our relationship because well we like to talk. Occasionally I think we like the sound of our own voice but you know. When we met FIFO husband entered our relationship with a broken heart (I think I was the rebound girl..lucky me). Me a single with a very liberal spirit. So given the difference in our ideas its was pretty important that we knew what was okay and what was not.
For him they have never changed cheat on me in any shape of form it’s over, in fact he told me again the other night. My liberal ideas I think still after 13 years still cause him unease but its okay I get it. So he reiterated; do it once have the decency to tell me but it’s still over and I will never take you back. His version of cheating is kissing and sex. Simple.
Now when I’m in a relationship I’m as monogamous as they come yet for me initially when we first met and right up until we married I felt I was okay with one indiscretion, if it happened. I had never thought and never felt that way but naively I thought I would be okay with the idea that if he slipped up once, ONCE, then I could turn a blind eye; sort of I think. As long as it was just the once,there was no relationship attached to that indiscretion and he was honest about it. I allowed for the ‘one indiscretion’ because well he was a gentleman (and still is) in his younger days and so his experience is different to mine. And my idea is that sex can just be sex.
Yet I guess that the real reason I was okay with that naive idea in reality was because I knew a couple of things about him. Firstly he told me he never would cheat on me, never let me down and is a man of his word. A promise is a promise. He is reliable like that. If he said he would be there at 8 pm with a dragons tooth he would be there at 8 pm bloody and battered but with a dragons tooth. He was honest there was nothing that was said that made me scratch my head and go hmmmm I’m not sure about that, he was as fair as they come and still is and he spoke about the boundaries first up. What I could and couldn’t expect from him. The trust I had for this man was immediate.
But.
For me now it’s different. Different. Now that I’m completely emotionally, physically and mentally invested it’s not okay for him to have ‘one indiscretion’. Not on your Nelly. Now I’m all grown up and he knows it. My boundaries have changed and he is aware of that. We have talked about it. We still talk about it. Confirming it constantly. Now he is mine like flower to a bee and all that rubbish. Yet that’s not to say I’m jealous or guarded with him. He still talks to his ex partners; why not they are beautiful women all grown up with beautiful babies of their own. He attends the odd girlie bar when overseas with his work mates (really what is it with a group of men gawking at women in a dimly lit room..gross) He works with the most beautiful women in close proximity’s for four weeks at a time and I’m okay with that. He tells me everything. Nothing is a secret.
However cheating for me and always has been more emotionally intimate, its not so much about the sex. If he was to hold their hand like he does mine, kiss them like he does me, whisper in their ear like he does mine or leave them a love note like he does me then there is out the door and I will close it without some much as a flinch. Only to open it again to give him his dirty laundry.
Yet I have never ever worried. Never have never will because we know the boundaries you know.
Tell me have you had the chat? What are your boundaries? What are you okay with?
xx Deb