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Sometimes, infidelity can make a marriage stronger

Recently, I told three of my closest female friends that I wanted to take a close look at extramarital affairs in the military and try to find something positive to say about them.

Of course, they looked at me as if I were crazy.

Cheryl said it sounded about as implausible as finding something positive to say about contracting AIDS. Mary felt that only a fool would entertain fantasies about something so devastating. Tanya insisted that only someone who has had an affair could ever think there might be something positive to say about them.

On all counts, they turned out to be wrong.

Yes, discovering a partner has had an affair is one of the most devastating experiences we might ever face. After all, an affair represents a sudden death of faith and trust that could remain lost forever. But even in death, there’s always hope for a new beginning. What could be more positive than that?

My appointment with understanding began with statistics. Studies show that half of all married men have been unfaithful; women claim about 47 percent. Those figures might even be higher, depending on how honest the participants in these studies actually chose to be.

Not exactly a pretty picture, is it? Statistics like these are a tough pill to swallow for any self-proclaimed marriage diehard. Believe me, I too was in dire need of a dose of confirmation that love and trust are, in fact, alive and well among the military married.

Thankfully, I didn’t have far.

On the fringe of my own circle of friends, I found the love story of all time. Jim and Teri (not their real names) have been married 10 years — with a tiny hitch involved. During a temporary, unaccompanied assignment to the West Coast four years ago, Jim, a first class petty officer, fell into an affair.

I use the word “fell” because I truly don’t believe that any reasonably happy spouse consciously seeks a relationship outside of marriage. The situation merely presents itself, one thing leads to another, and without thinking it through, a serious error in judgment results.

When Jim returned to his wife in Norfolk, Va., the truth, as it inevitably always seems to, unraveled into a rough and rocky road they would have to follow to reaffirm their commitment to one another.

They traveled that road together, even though it involved time, extreme effort and an enormous amount of pain. Today, they are as committed to their marriage as they ever were.

If that isn’t what real love is all about, I’ll eat my wedding ring.

Call me a hopeless romantic. The truth is I didn’t always believe that a spouse deserved a second chance. In the deepest corner of my marriage-loving heart, I used to be convinced that what was vowed at the altar was carved in stone. To be respected and honored by all — especially by those doing the vowing. As far as I was concerned, any intimate activity involving someone other than one’s own spouse should cost every one of those cheating so-and-sos plenty in divorce court.

But as I matured and acquired a few marital bruises of my own, I finally realized that there is actually very little logic behind this reasoning — at least in terms of what makes human hearts tick. Because one couple chooses to live up to the vows they’ve made, doesn’t mean the rest of us will or that we even can, consistently, do the same.

Sometimes a spouse might actually need to have an affair of sorts, if only to learn from such a profound mistake, so that they can finally get their you-know-what together and give that marriage the full dedication it deserves with a genuine till-death-do-us-part commitment.

Ask anybody who’s been “there” and had to learn the hard way: Nothing gives the heart 20/20 vision quite like being in the arms of the wrong person.

I’ve listened to couples during round-table discussions on the subject of infidelity.

The amount of disagreement between the sexes on what constitutes an affair is astounding. Women tend to view any extra-marital interaction as cheating, where men are more inclined to discriminate between physical and emotional impulses.

An affair involves feelings, the men said. A one-night stand, or a woman who lets herself be a sexual convenience for a married man, isn’t even in the same ballpark, they explained. It’s who a guy goes home to that tells the story of where his heart really lies.

Women seem more concerned with outside influences detrimental to the future of their marriage. It’s friends, many of them say, who have a tendency to be the biggest offenders in the struggle to keep a marriage together.

I agree, friends surrounding a marriage need to learn to respect the boundaries of that marriage, through good times and bad. Too many times friends get involved, offering the facade of support, when finding new partners isn’t what that couple wants at all. Working things out and making a marriage work — isn’t that really the best solution there is?

Have I found something positive to say about extra-marital affairs? I think so. If one couple can survive the aftermath of an affair and find genuine completeness in a love that strong, the rest of us can, too.

Sometimes, just knowing the impossible is possible is all that it takes.

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Debi Ketner, a 14-year military spouse, is married to a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. She lives in Norfolk, Va. Get in touch with her or join the conversation in The Home Front blog.