Marriages and Marital Misconduct
Marriage must be based on trust. If there is reason to mistrust someone, it would have been better to never have hooked up in the first place. But marital misconduct usually does not happen overnight. One partner may get ‘comfortable’ in the relationship which means taking the other one for granted. Sometimes that void in their life gets filled by a chance meeting with an old flame or a coworker who shows them some badly wanted attention. Some will allow that relationship to advance past just talking and from there, it follows a dark path to infidelity.
Marriage takes work and dedication. It means still bringing flowers and saying nice things about your partner. It means supporting them and not talking about them behind their back. There is nothing you can do when your partner is apart from you, but trust that the love you have shown them will be enough to keep you both bonded no matter what circumstances arise.
As for knowing if they are lying. That is a greater challenge. Women are often better than men when it comes to picking up signs of infidelity as they are very observant. But it does not mean that men cannot see what is obvious. For example, my ex-spouse could lie to my face and I would believe her because she was a great actress. She was also a great communicator and knew the words to say to convince me that she was telling the truth. But in our first year of marriage, I began to notice things that were ‘off’. I could smell what seemed like ‘musk’ on her. When I would reach out to touch her she would flinch and intimacy was shut down as to her being ‘tired’ all the time. I was pretty certain that something was going on, but when I confronted her, she denied any wrong-doing and I let it pass. Finally, one day, she fessed up. She had lost her job for absenteeism (taking off with her boyfriend who was a coworker), and she had a full story lined up for me when she told me about the affair, which somehow turned out to be my fault… which was okay, because I likely was not giving her the attention she deserved as I was studying for a college program that was changing my career and failure also meant no work. But the point is, that I was not wrong about what was going on.
As they would say in my psychology courses…” all behavior has the meaning”. If your partner has become distant, seems to always want to pick a fight, takes off around the corner when the cellphone rings or does not answer it when you are nearby, stops talking to you and spends a lot of time alone in the house, is often late coming home, is putting on perfume for work (not allowed in many workplaces), etc., there may be something going on. Now they could also be dealing with depression, stress at work, or with you as a partner, or other issues you are not aware of, but it is a good reason to find time to have a heart-to-heart talk before you draw any conclusions.
