Infidelity

Think about it, look at the people around you. In every social circle, there is a group of people juggling more than one commitment at a time. You wonder, from the outside, and try hard to believe the best of your friends, people you have always counted among the finest souls you know, and yet you sense that some of them are wrestling with the temptation of falling for someone else while an existing commitment hangs in the balance. Yes, I know a few such couples in my own circle, caught between two relationships at once.

No, you would have to be genuinely insensitive to call them irresponsible and lecture them about integrity. It takes more understanding than that to see that choosing to seek happiness and excitement outside an existing relationship was probably never an easy choice for them either.

The real question is why this happens, and why it seems to be becoming so common among the educated, well earning, so called urban generation, especially when we are the ones who got to choose our own partners in the first place. We chose someone, married by our own will and judgement, and then a few months or years later, we found our love quietly replaced by a passing temptation outside the relationship. By the time we notice, the aftermath tends to leave scars that do not really fade, scars made of remorse more than anything else.

It would almost make more sense if this happened mostly to people in arranged marriages, where the mismatch reveals itself slowly over time. What is strange is that infidelity seems just as common, if not more, among those who married for love.

While reading an article in a newspaper once, I learned that every relationship really does move in a cycle. In the beginning, you fall for someone. You wait for their calls, crave their touch, long for their company, and like everything about them so completely that even their most irritating habits start to seem endearing. You forgive things you would never normally forgive, and none of it feels like effort. That is simply what the early chemistry of love does to us. Falling in love is a thrilling thing, isn't it, the kind of feeling people describe as being swept off your feet. Picture it, you were standing there, doing nothing at all, and then something happened, and suddenly you were entirely consumed by it.

But nothing in this world stays the same forever. If that is true, then the euphoria of new love has to fade too, eventually. Remember, every relationship has a cycle. Not every kiss stays magical. Not every touch feels like affection anymore. The regular phone calls stop meaning as much as they once did. The habits that once felt endearing slowly start to grate.

That shift, from the magic of early love into a quieter, duller togetherness, tends to raise a lot of questions in your own mind, and sends you back to the memory of how alive you felt in the beginning. Some people, unable to sit with that change, start to want that same feeling again, sometimes with someone else.

I do not think many of us realise that we all carry a quiet affliction called needing to be right. That feeling makes it easy to put the blame for everything on someone else. It convinces you that your partner is the one responsible for your unhappiness, your restlessness, all of it.

There were times in a relationship of my own, with someone I once dated, when I thought about walking away, convinced the magic had faded. And when I looked back honestly, I found that I had made her the offender each time, thanks to that same disease of needing to be right.

Still, one has to ask, is it really a crime to want some light on a dark evening. I do not think so. We are given only one life, and seeking happiness is our right as human beings. We were not brought into this world, or into any relationship, only to endure whatever it gives us. We are human, we want love, and we owe it to ourselves to look for it.

But at what cost. Should it come at the cost of being unfaithful to someone else.

That same article taught me something else too, that the answer to this question does not lie outside your relationship. It lies within it.

It does not lie outside because you would eventually find yourself in the same place again, a few months or years down the line, with someone new. Remember, every relationship has a cycle. You would live through the same magic, followed by the same eventual numbness.

Real, lasting happiness in a relationship lies within it. All it asks of us is that we learn to keep loving the same person, throughout our life, the very person who once created that magic and swept us off our feet in the first place.

If you were expecting this piece to end with a formula for how to keep loving the person you committed to, I am sorry to disappoint you. I wish I knew it myself.

Honestly, I have never fully trusted the lessons in the books written on this subject. What you need instead is the wisdom to understand that anyone new who tempts you away from your relationship will only stay charming for a few months or years at most. And I hope none of us would want to carry the consequences of that for a lifetime, just to chase a happiness that lasts only that long.

So really, all we can do is keep working on the relationship we already have, day after day. It takes time, effort, and energy, and more than anything, it takes wisdom. You have to know what it takes to make it work, and accept that there is no formula for it.

Love, I have come to believe, is not really a mystery. It is not something that simply happens to you and either lasts or does not. Like most things worth having, it responds to the effort you put into it, and in that sense, it is less a feeling you fall into and more a decision you keep making, over and over, for as long as you choose to.

God decides who walks into your life. It is up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you choose to keep, and who you refuse to let go.

Run with the flow of life, but remember, whatever you put out tends to come back to you, sooner or later.