Ask Dan and Jennifer » cheating husband

Should You Stand By Your Man After An Affair?

Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:16 +0000

We’ve all seen it over and over … politicians (and others who are vocal and visible) preach morality, family and the like, and end up falling victim to an affair. Then, what’s perhaps more surprising to us, is that the spouse (usually the wife) decides to stick it out. To forgive and forget and work through whatever issues have arisen. This decision baffles a lot of us, and it’s one that Governor Mark Sanford’s wife, Jenny, recently tried to explain in a recent interview. She’s the gracious, forgiving woman being called a “role model,”by the Washington Post, and a “media genius” by Newsweek.

Infidelity Is An Addiction

In June, when Gov. Sanford admitted that he had not been traveling along the Appalachian Trail, but in fact, traipsing around Argentina with the mistress he had met eight years ago, Jenny was cool and composed. She and her sons then moved out of the governor’s mansion, but the former investment banker turned stay-at-home mother of four has decided to give her husband another chance, for a reason I completely agree with: Infidelity is an addiction and – just like when someone’s addicted to drugs or alcohol – it becomes nearly impossible to break away.

For this reason, I deem adultery the “forgivable sin” and, in my book Can we Cure and Forgive Adultery, delve into reasons why people need to conquer this biochemical craving for connection and have an affair with their own partner!

As Jenny aptly put it, “Everybody would like an escape sometimes. I’d like somebody 5,000 miles away I could E-mail. It’s not exclusive to men, but I know that isn’t realistic.”

Affairs Are Self-Medicating

Engaging in an affair can provide the desire for an illicit self-medicating, thrill-seeking “high” that many people seek. This can easily become a self-enforcing cycle: politicians and others of us under a lot of stress are looking for a release from this constant pressure. An affair fulfills the biochemical craving for connection, along with that high and thrill of a new romance. But keeping up the charade only causes more pressure. And so the cycle perpetuates itself. In order to re-instate that connection with our partner I suggest taking some time apart and doing what I call a “brush with death,” which Jenny has already done.

More instructions can be found in my book, Make up, Don’t Breakup, but when you do this “break up to make up” correctly, you’re operating from the position that you don’t know what you have till you lose it. This is a technique that jolts most people into getting their feelings back and falling back in love with their partner.

Forgiveness Is Divine

Or, in the words of Jenny Sanford:

“All I can do is forgive. Reconciliation is something else, and that is going to be a harder road. I have put my heart and soul into being a good mother and wife. Now I think it’s up to my husband to do the soul-searching to see if he wants to stay married. The ball is in his court.”

Digital Betrayal: How Cheating Husbands And Wives Use Technology To Cover Their Tracks

Jim Walthby — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:00:59 +0000

These days it’s easier than ever to communicate with people. We’ve got high-speed internet connections (wireless & otherwise), mobile phones, pagers, fax machines.

We can talk at the touch of a button, across cities, countries, the entire world. Furthermore, communication through these digital protocols is almost instant, fairly cheap and,if you want it to be,completely private and hidden.

While advancements in digital communication are, on the whole, a great thing, they do have their down sides. One disadvantage is that cheating husbands, wives (or, for that matter, girlfriends or boyfriends) can communicate with their private lovers away from the prying eyes and ears of their trusting partners.

It happens every day: thousands upon thousands of text messages are sent by disloyal men and women to those they’re sleeping with behind their real partners’ backs.

Back in the day, the only way a guy or girl could arrange a clandestine meeting would be over a hard-line (either a house phone or a pay phone). That meant the cheater would either have to make risky calls from the home of their unsuspecting spouses, or secretly take a trip to a local call box and do it from there.

Both of these methods of communication could often be spotted by the betrayed party quite easily.

But that’s now a thing of the past. It’s now a cinch for a cheater to send messages to their secret lovers from work, a locked bathroom, even from under the bed covers while their current, faithful partner sleeps quietly and 100% unaware of what’s going on just 6 inches away from them.

It’s true; things are easier for cheaters these days, but not that easy. Just as all others kinds of cheats, be it a card shark, a conman or a computer hacker, leave signs of their dishonesty behind, so do disloyal partners. And looking for the right signs, in the right places, is the absolute best way of knowing for sure if you can trust your partner.

Okay, you know now how easy it is for cheaters to communicate with their secret partners using digital communication. But what are the signs, the indications, the clues of this kind of activity? Let’s take a look:

1. Computers and Internet

…

Suspect Your Boyfriend or Husband of Cheating? What If You Could Track Exactly Where He Goes and When?

Dan and Jennifer — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:34:02 +0000

Do you know that agonizing feeling, when you suspect your loved one is cheating on you, but you just can’t put your finger on why? The panic, the fear, the self doubt, and then the inevitable denial… because nobody really wants to face that possibility and it’s implications.

Cheating is a betrayal of trust, which is what makes it so painful to be on the receiving end. And the only thing worse than being cheated on is not knowing for sure, just suspecting that SOMETHING may be going on.

Don’t you sometimes wish you could just follow him or her around like a fly on the wall, to know once and for all if you’re just making this up or if it’s real?

Well, technology has come a long way in the last years, and today you can actually do just that. The technology to actually digitally monitor someone’s movements through GPS is available today, from companies like LandAirSea.

The GPS Tracking Key from LandAirSea is basically a small spy gadget that is small, easily concealable, and can track where a person goes, for how long, and even how fast. The pocket sized GPS Tracking Key receives signals from the twenty-four Department of Defense GPS satellites orbiting the earth. It’s internal computer accurately determines the GPS location of the device within 2.5 meters and records this data every second. The data can then be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth simply by plugging the Tracking Key into the USB port of a computer.

Think of it as a video recorder for your (or his) car. Silently recording everywhere it goes, without anyone being the wiser.

In fact, this type of tracking technology has even been used to solve crimes, like this murder case. Here’s the NBC report on how this hidden GPS tracking device worked in a surprising real life situation.

Suddenly, you CAN know for sure if he’s really coming straight home after work, or taking a little "detour". Ideally you could just ask him and have an open and honest discussion on the situation, but this is pretty unlikely in most infidelity situations.

So isn’t it a little creepy and "stalkeresque" to follow your significant other around with a hidden GPS tracking device? Well, yeah, sure it is. But it really sucks to suspect infidelity and not know. Facing just about any situation is much easier than worrying and being afraid of it… not knowing is always the worst. So either you end the relationship because something "may be happening", or you find out for sure.

And no cheater is going to admit anything if you don’t have blatant, obvious evidence. Even then, you’re unlikely to get a plain admission.

At the end of the day, trust is the most important component in a relationship. Suspicion, lying, and any kind of deception is a sure way to destroy your relationship. Once you start lying to your partner, it becomes easier and easier… and soon thereafter the trust is broken, and so is the relationship. So stay honest with those you love.

But if you get that nagging feeling in your gut that something is just not right, and you really want to know for sure if he’s seeing someone else and lying about it, do yourself a favor and find out for sure.

Depending on your specific situation and the local laws in your jurisdiction, something like the GPS Tracking Key may well be an option for you.

That type of fear and uncertainty is no way to live. One way or another, put your mind at ease so you can move forward and enjoy your life again.

This article is brought to you by LandAirSea Systems. To sponsor an article on AskDanAndJennifer.com, click here.