It Doesn't Just Happen

WARNING – The contents of this blog will be offensive to some people. If you can’t handle graphic comments then please don’t read the following. If you choose to read, please don’t comment that you find the statements distasteful, we are going for total honesty here. Adults Only!

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This whole thing with Tiger Woods and his plethora of mistresses has started to fade away, but the commentary continues. I have nothing personal against Tiger, but I do decry the choices that he made. What bothers me about Tiger, John Edwards, Mark Sanford, Jim McGreevy, Bill Clinton and others is the statements that they make after the fact. There is a sense that, “It just happened” or, “I made a mistake.”

The truth is, infidelity of this sort does NOT just happen. There is a quote from the TV Show Friends that applies here; “What did you mean to stick it in, her purse?” These men did not just walk down the street, stumble against a pretty girl and accidentally copulate.

A recent article talked about people in online worlds such as Second Life having entire second lives including an online ‘spouse.’ There are divorces that occur because one spouse has met someone else on the internet and fallen in love with them. Office romances occur when you work lots of hours with someone and grow close to them. All of these are choices that lead to infidelity.

Fidelity in marriage comes from daily choices to love your spouse and to rebuff others. Having a faithful marriage is never an accident. Neither is adultery. The simple truth is that being married does not turn off your libido. There is no doubt about it, sex is fun and you will desire to have sex with people who are not your spouse. You will be emotionally and sexually attracted to other people in your life. The question is, will you make the choices and take the steps that moves you away from them, towards your spouse or will you choose to move towards them and threaten the destruction of your marriage.

When any of these men were in the act of having sex with their mistresses, they were in a position (no pun intended) that they chose. What’s more, they had already made a hundred choices to get to that point and at any point they could have come to their senses and chosen to reverse the process. They chose to continue spending time with the person after they were attracted to her. They chose to say, “yes” to going out with her. They chose to go back to a private place with her. They chose to get physical with her. And they chose to do the deed. They could have chosen at any time to get out of bed, pull up their pants, put the cigar away, and driven away. But they chose the momentary pleasure of getting their rocks off over the long term joy of a faithful marriage.

Sex is NOT a bad thing. Frankly it is an amazing gift from God. I am personally a fan (I’ll bet there is a Facebook Fan Page for it. But, sleeping around cheapens sex and ruins relationships. Every time you do it with someone, you lose a little of yourself…unless, that person is your spouse and it is part of a healthy marriage relationship, then you gain a little every time. Genesis 2:24-25 paints a clear and beautiful picture of how God meant it to be: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Naked and Unashamed: that's how you close you are supposed to be with your spouse, not with anyone else.

If these men had chosen to invest as much time, energy, attention, and romance with their wives as they spent on their mistresses, then I guarantee that they wouldn’t have needed the mistress for a sexual outlet. It’s amazing how much a marriage can recover with time and attention and how much it can be destroyed by infidelity. Rarely do marriages recover from infidelity. This is the worst betrayal that can happen. When you make the choices that lead to this, it is not an accident and it is inexcusable. Please don’t make it worse by making excuses about how it “just happened.” Make the choice ahead of time that this behavior is unacceptable. Make the choice to daily love your spouse and to refuse all others.

You have my permission to go have sex with your spouse now. Everyone else should go take a cold shower.

P.S. Honey, I'll be home early tonight.