by Danielle Wright & Lisa K. Stephenson
Dealing with infidelity in a relationship can be a hard thing to navigate for both you and your partner—yes, this is hard for them, too. Infidelity is the action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner. There are also a multitude of ways someone can cheat or show disloyalty to a spouse: physical, emotional, cyber, financial, and/or a combination of all of the above. On the recent season of TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé, we meet the couple Jasmine and Gino.
The premise of the show is that international couples have 90 days to either get married or call it quits. During this time, the couples experience many ups and downs and quarrels. Particularly with this couple, Jasmine and Gino, there seemed to be a lot of disagreements in their relationship. When viewing the reunion, we saw that Gino had a bachelor party prior to the arrival of his fiancé, Jasmine.
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Production aired unseen footage of Gino dancing with strippers while they were naked and smiling, showing them loads of appreciation by adding money to their panties and tossing it along their naked torsos. Needless to say, Jasmine was irate; her anger turned to tears as she walked off of the stage. She then made it clear that had she known of his behavior during the bachelor party, she would not have married him.
Let’s unpack this because while this couple was not yet married, his behavior could be an indicator for future behavior. According to Talogy, “The key here is that your best predictor of future behavior is past behavior or past performance in a similar situation. If you’ve always done something a certain way, you’re likely to do that same thing in the same manner in the future. The same goes for on-the-job performance.”
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Jasmine became triggered because (1) her husband was showing affection to women other than her, (2) he lied about the events of that night, downplaying his behavior, (3) his ex was a stripper, and both she and Jasmine had a rocky exchange at one point which caused Jasmine to lose her job, (4) Gino was not remorseful for his actions or apologetic.
We can see here that although the couple is now married, Jasmine can and should be on the lookout for this type of behavior to resurface. The correlation between his ex having once been a stripper and him spending his bachelor night with strippers but refraining from sharing this with his new wife-to-be is indicative of what’s to come in the future of their marriage.
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As aforementioned, infidelity can take on many faces, but sometimes we have to ask ourselves, did we ignore the signs? Before we marry someone, there are always signs of their character flaws waiting to fully surface. They have either recognized these flaws due to past relationships and have done the work necessary to change, or they just monkey swing from one relationship to the next, believing there to be nothing wrong at all. Establishing clear boundaries and leaving at the first sight of disrespect is the key.
If ever you find yourself in a marriage and you are dealing with infidelity, you should always leave! Resources are available to you if you need them. Many women need closure before they can leave a relationship/marriage, so here are 10 questions you can ask before your departure to help expedite your healing:
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WHAT LED YOU TO BETRAY OUR TRUST AND ENGAGE IN INFIDELITY?
Contrary to popular belief, there is always a reason! Betraying someone’s trust means you lack respect for that person. Trust is not tangible; it is only a firm belief in something. For many men and some women, if it cannot be seen, then it cannot be proven. So, if you cannot see them betraying your trust, then perhaps they didn’t do anything wrong at all.
Infidelity can be covered up with, “I was only texting her, we never had sex.” As you can hear, in this case, they are undermining their actions because it was not physical, tangible, or able to be proven had they not confessed it themselves. Another example of this is a man cheating but not confessing about it until the mistress falls pregnant. Now there is something tangible tying them to the affair, which means they have to come clean.
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