Cheating Spouses Quotes

If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.

They'll say you are bad or perhaps you are mad or at least you should stay undercover. Your mind must be bare if you would dare to think you can love more than one lover.

A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.

I always knew there was no one who is going to accept my flaws and understand my brokenness.And i knew it very well that nobody would hold my hand when the wind of darkness overcome my life so i just pushed them,i pushed them all away.

Because I am really successful and work on the sets throughout the day. I had sex with a variety of male models. If my spouse accepts all of this, he will be unconcerned if he discovers I cheated on him at some point in the future. That is how much he cares for me. Never in my wildest dreams did I consider defrauding him. When something becomes legal, it is common for people to lose interest in it.

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

A question that always makes me hazy is it me or are the others crazy' Albert Einstein

Cheating in relationship is a sign of self-regulation failure. When it happens ones, it is a mistake. When it happens twice, it is unfortunate. But when it happens thrice or more, it is a pattern indicating primitive, uncivilized inhuman behavior.

Searching through Monster.com while on the clock feels like being on Tinder while still married.

The FBI had finally wised up and put Charley Davidson on the task of bringing a killer to justice. Because that’s what Charley did. Brought killers to justice. She also found lost dogs, exposed cheating spouses, and tracked down the occasional skip. And she rarely referred to herself in the third person.

The fact that the person who you are sleeping with is also sleeping with another person or other people does not necessarily mean that he or she does not love you. And the fact that you are the only person who someone is sleeping with does not necessarily mean that he or she loves you.

This woman enabled her husband to cheat, and she wasn't doing either one of them any favors. Instead of leaving him, she would take him home, scold him, and then carry on with business as usual. Inside though, she would be hurting. No woman could love a cheater and not pay the price for it.

The fact that you do not trust your spouse or lover doesn’t necessarily mean that they are cheating on you; and the fact that you do doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t.

A wife who discomforts you with truth is better than a mistress who massages you with lies.

Being faithful and monogamous is not natural for human beings. It takes work. Deep down we all know that. We have all been tempted to stray at some point or another. Even when it was only a fleeting thought and we didn't act on it. Every time we acknowledge that someone of the opposite sex is "attractive" or "sexy" we are doing nothing other than pointing out that they would be a suitable mate. Not acting on that natural impulse to want to mate with a viable mating partner requires a conscious decision. It's a constant struggle between what your body wants, and what the civilized part of your brain says you should do, in order to avoid the negative consequences of cheating on your spouse and ruining your long-term relationship. That's why affairs, and extra-marital sex, are often referred to as "a moment of weakness.

...(S)uffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from outside. It's the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital. In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim's mind -- a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim's mind.

People cheat because something is lacking in them—connection, empathy, good character. Cheating is about entitlement. You might actually be a crappy spouse, but you did not make your spouse cheat.

Some people view love and romance as a sacred bond between two individuals. Other people see love as a game, where the goal is to manipulate another individual and gain emotional power over a partner. People who view love as a game are much more likely to have multiple love interest; cheating is just another way to gain control over one's partner.

It will always be foolish to ask a cheater if they would ever cheat on you.

People in power literally act like someone with brain damage. Not only are they more impulsive, self-centred, reckless, arrogant and rude than average, they are more likely to cheat on their spouses, are less attentive to other people and less interested in others’ perspectives. They’re also more shameless,

A man who is willing to cheat on his wife, she said, will often make promises to you that he can’t keep. When he tells you he loves you, it’s a form of entrapment. Cheating spouses are masters at manipulation, she said. He may tell you things to keep you from ending the affair. He has both a wife and a lover on the side. He has no incentive to change.

Your business is a spouse. Quit cheating and give one business all of your attention. You will get out what you put in, and rationing your time among mistresses is a slow prescription to lackluster incomes and asset values.

If it's true that men and women can be 'just friends' then how come all cheaters first start out as 'just friends?

loneliness is a great teacher and a master test of character

Cheating is an innate evolutionarily programmed desire, especially in men, but it is not a desire that cannot be controlled.

Having faith in your spouse does not lead to trust, truth does.

Because if you take something you're a thief.' She nursed the silence a moment. Downed the balance of her drink and silently signaled for another. 'Sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people don't get it. They steal but they call themselves honest. They cheat on their spouses and lovers but they think they're good people. They lie but they'd never call themselves liars. Well, let me tell you something, Todd. . . ." She pointed toward him with her right hand, with her lit cigarette. He leaned away slightly. She looked into the mirror of his eyes and saw herself going too far. 'You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives . . . that's real. The rest is just a story for publication.

Before Jaylee, I was always under the impression that people cheated on their spouses because they were seeking something outside of the marriage that was missing. I’m not sure if anything was lacking in my marriage to Robert. I wasn’t looking; Jaylee just happened. Now I fear that I will never again experience the heights of desire that I feel when I’m with him and I’m mourning it before it’s even gone.

With my wedding photography business, I want repeat customers. So hooray for divorce! That’s why I take lots of pictures—of cheating spouses.

If you've spent more than an hour plotting a getaway route, you're either a writer or a criminal. Or maybe a cheating spouse.

Especially if it wasn't just a fling, but an affair that had been going on for a long time. You haven't only been cheated on, you've also been deceived. It's possible for someone to be unfaithful to you without really thinking about you at all, but an affair requires planning.

There are times when it is prudent to turn the other cheek, especially when it comes to spouses, family members, and friends. Courtesy and love are contagious and are far more effective over the long-haul than trying to ruin the reputation and well-being of another. (Chapter 7)

Peaches found herself wondering if Mary, a tiny brunette with an unprepossessing manner and less than ‘stellar’ work ethics, had to play Where’s Waldo to find Steve’s dick beneath his gigantic waistline.

Among the required reading for all PUAs were books on evolutionary theory: The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Sperm Wars by Robin Baker. You read them, and you understand why women tend to like jerks, why men want so many sexual partners, and why so many people cheat on their spouses. At the same time, however, you understand that the violent impulses most of us successfully repress are actually normal and natural. For Mystery, a Darwinist by nature, these books gave him an intellectual justification for his antisocial emotions and his desire to harm the organism that had mated with his woman. It was not a healthy thing. Tyler

The world has far too much morality, at least in the sense of activity of people's moral instincts. If you look, and this become clear to me as I tried to identify the causes of violence at various scales throughout human history, from police blotters where the biggest motive for homicide is not just amoral predacious: a smuggler killing someone to steal his Rolex, the biggest categories of motives for homicide are moralistic in the eyes of the perpetrator, of the murderer, is capital punishment: killing someone who deserve to die because: whether is a spouse who's unfaithful or someone who distim him in an argument over a parking space or cheated him in a deal. That's why people kill each other: for moral reasons. That is true as large scales as well.If you'll look up at the largest episodes of bloodletting in human history most of them would have moralistic motives: the nazi Holocaust, Pol Pot, Stalin, the Gulag, Mao, the European war of religions, the Crusades, all of them were killing people for, not because they wanted to accumulate vast amounts of money, or huge harems of women, but because they thought they were acting out of a moral cause.

man who is willing to cheat on his wife, she said, will often make promises to you that he can’t keep. When he tells you he loves you, it’s a form of entrapment. Cheating spouses are masters at manipulation, she said. He may tell you things to keep you from ending the affair. He has both a wife and a lover on the side. He has no incentive to change. It

If you think that your partner has been cheating, then take a look at their will. If a past lover is in there, then it is probable that some form of infidelity has occurred.

Everyone thinks that. That’s the reason people cheat on their spouses, because this new relationship is just so exciting and new.

deceivers shall always be at the junction of double mindedness

Translations A literary translation is like a spouse who thinks they can cheat on you because business has brought them to a foreign city.

Cheating is pure hypocrisy. Our partner deserves better than that. If we don’t love someone, we should not be with them. That would also be hypocrisy.

If your spouse wants to cheat on you, he or she will. This world is a haven of opportunities. But no matter what, in any relationship, one must never doubt the spouse

A husband hits wife by his grown horns when she has cheated on him.

She cheated. She confessed. I forgave ... Emboldened by this, cheated more broadly.

It wasn’t a perfume that she smelled, either. No, it was the odor of something larger: the scent of secrecy, of newness, and of rediscovered youth.

Meet your partner. You think you’ve never seen them before, but you knew them. They were in your first breakup, your worst heartbreak, your old marriage, the honeymoon sex, in the alcohol swishes of finding out your spouse cheated, and in the times she leaned over the grass to kiss your cheek at picnics. Love was dancing in the same candidate who kissed you, the same nominee who hated you, and the plenty of people who tricked you. Love was dancing to the tango of your agreement to try. Love grows bigger and bigger, shaping itself more correctly to your happy heart.

In my version neither story would get off the ground because all the spouses involved in both stories would honor their partners and remain faithful. Both ‘Patient’ and “Piano’ glorify and romanticize adultery; and that only works in fiction when it’s the female who’s cuckolding the male. If a story shows a man cheating on his wife… well, that’s never a cultural masterpiece, is it?

It is said that God loved His people so much that He went into a tremendous rage out of jealousy if they cheated with other Gods. So, who am I not to feel just a little bit of jealousy over my partner?

There will be times when people will breach the boundaries of your heart. When it happens, seek inner forgiveness to unburden your soul from resentment. Look back, Each person that came into your life served a purpose.

After all, she knows how painful it can be not to follow your heart and she knows about the obstacles and about loyalty and duty and about the countless kinds of love. If only Eve and Myles were freer to make the right choices, she thinks.

In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the alter, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species." After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: "We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves." Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, "I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents." Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.

When we ask someone out, and are unsure whether we will hear them say yes, we are taking a leap of faith mixed with doubt. When we believe our spouse that they did not cheat, it is a leap of faith. We doubt in the absence of evidence, or when our trust in ourselves, and others are disrupted in some ways.

What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone—where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you’re a dog—is now a tool for soliciting and analyzing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top fifty Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like “depression” on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other Web sites can target you with antidepressants. Share an article about cooking on ABC News, and you may be chased around the Web by ads for Teflon-coated pots. Open—even for an instant—a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new Internet doesn’t just know you’re a dog; it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium kibble.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (1:22-25). James is talking about those who read the Bible regularly but whose lives are no different from the lives of unbelievers. They hear sermons, go to midweek Bible studies, and keep a Bible on their nightstand—but the Word of God has no impact or influence on the way they live. They fill their minds with the same filth their worldly counterparts wallow in. They tell the same jokes, use the same filthy speech, they cheat the boss and the government, and maybe even cheat on their spouses. What is the point of reading God’s Word when it has no effect on their daily lives?

The Cavalier Servente by Stewart Stafford Her lover creeps On stairs that creak To where the mistress sleeps To wet his beak. Affairs in the dark When matrimony is parked A disloyal lark Starts the carnal spark. At break of day The cuckolder creeps away From naughty play He’s had his way. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

Knowing that this kind of unmasked plutocracy can take root in democratic societies without so much as an effort to hide it is like being forced to watch your spouse cheat on you when that is not your kink. Maybe we should see conspiracy culture—with its theater of uncovering things that are not hidden—as some sort of twisted lunge for self-respect.

Arrive before your Husband. Not that I can See quite what good arriving first will do; But still arrive before him. When he's taken His place upon the couch and you go too To sit beside him, on your best behavior Stealthily touch my foot, and look at me, Watching my nods, my eyes, my face's language; Catch and return my signals secretly. I'll send a wordless message with my eyebrows; You'll read my fingers' words, words traced in wine. When you recall our games of love together, Your finger on rosy cheeks must trace a line. If in your silent thoughts you wish to chide me, Let your hand hold the lobe of your soft ear; When, darling, what I do or say gives pleasure, Keep turning to an fro the ring you wear. When you wish well-earned curses on your husband, Lay your hand on the table, as in prayer. If he pours you wine, watch out, tell him to drink it; Ask for what you want from the waiter there. I shall take next the glass you hand the waiter And I'll drink from the place you took your sips; If he should offer anything he's tasted, Refuse whatever food has touch his lips. Don't let him plant his arms upon your shoulders, Don't let him rest your gentle head on his hard chest, Don't let your dress, your breasts, admit his fingers, And--most of all--no kisses to be pressed! You kiss--and I'll reveal myself your lover; I'll say 'they're mine'; my legal claim I'll stake. All this, of course I'll see, But what's well hidden under your dress--blind terror makes me quake.

You want to make a difference in your world? Live a holy life: Be faithful to your spouse. Be the one at the office who refuses to cheat. Be the neighbor who acts neighborly. Be the employee who does the work and doesn’t complain. Pay your bills. Do your part and enjoy life. Don’t speak one message and live another. People are watching the way we act more than they are listening to what we say.

If I cheated on my spouse or partner, and they made the choice to stay with me regardless, I would leave that person. I will never be perceived as someone who needs a nice warm bath to come home to after rolling around outside in the grass; a coddled person, an infantile person, a person who's choices are perceived as the mistakes of a toddler, only needing to be slapped on the hand and then coddled. That would kill the relationship for me, that would kill everything. I'm not an inconsequential flower, I'm not a purified version washed down to be palatable; I am an equal. My mistakes should be treated as mistakes. I don't need forgiveness for anything that I do. I'm not an inconsequential flower, I'm not a purified version washed down to be palatable; I am an equal. My mistakes should be treated as mistakes. I don't need forgiveness for anything that I do.

Madoff was not inhumanly monstrous. He was monstrously human. He was greedy for money and praise, arrogantly sure of his own capacity to pull it off, smugly dismissive of skeptics—just like anyone who mortgaged the house to invest in tech stocks, or tapped the off-limits college fund to gamble on a new business, or put all the retirement savings into a hedge fund they didn’t understand, or cheated a little on the tax return or the expense account or the spouse.

Well, nobody’s perfect; all are sinners; remember King David” can be used to defend the indefensible. Such an argument, when applied to the ministry, nullifies the biblical character qualifications of 1 Timothy 2–3 and elsewhere. And, when applied to oneself, can justify literally anything. “Even if I embezzle a little from my company, we’re all sinners.” “I cheat on my spouse a little, but Jesus said lust is adultery of the heart, so who hasn’t?” This is precisely the kind of argument the Bible says is a contradiction of the gospel itself (Rom. 3:1–8).

sexual orthodoxy and the exercise of power. If a President can’t keep his pants on, does he lose the right to rule us? If a public servant cheats on his wife does this make him more likely to cheat on the electorate? For myself, I’d rather be ruled by an adulterer, by some sexual rogue, than by a prim celibate or zipped-up spouse. As criminals tend to specialize in certain crimes, so corrupt politicians normally specialize in their corruption: the sexual blackguards stick to fucking, the bribe-takers to graft. In which case it would make more sense to elect proven adulterers instead of discouraging them from public life. I

Melancholy isn’t, of course, a disorder that needs to be cured. It’s a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face to face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start. We have not been singled out. Marrying anyone, even the most suitable of beings, comes down to a case of identifying which variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: “We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.” After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: “We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves.” Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, “I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents.” Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.

Sometimes the social stakes are higher than what a passing stranger thinks of you. If everyone you know finds out that you’ve been cheating on your spouse, you can’t just say “I was driven by sexual urges that were designed by natural selection to maximize genetic legacy.” Then people will go around saying you’re the kind of person who cheats on a spouse. And of course, you’re not that kind of person! So you need to be able to say something more like “But you have to understand: my spouse had grown emotionally distant and wasn’t meeting my deep need for companionship and intimacy.” Then people will say they can’t really blame you. So it helps to have already heard that side of the argument, and watched it carry the day, before you decide to have the dalliance. Then you’re ready.

Contempt is born when we fixate on our spouse’s weaknesses. Every spouse has these sore points. If you want to find them, without a doubt you will. If you want to obsess about them, they’ll grow – but you won’t! Jesus provides a remedy that is stunning in its simplicity yet foreboding in its difficulty. He tells us to take the plank out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye (see Matthew 7:3–5). If you’re thinking “but my spouse is the one who has the plank,” allow me to let you in on a secret: You’re exactly the type of person Jesus is talking to. You’re the one He wanted to challenge with these words. Jesus isn’t helping us resolve legal matters here; He’s urging us to adopt humble spirits. He wants us to cast off the contempt – to have contempt for the contempt – and learn the spiritual secret of respect. Consider the type of people Jesus loved in the days He walked on earth – Judas (the betrayer); the woman at the well (a sexual libertine); Zacchaeus (the conniving financial cheat); and many others like them. In spite of the fact that Jesus was without sin and these people were very much steeped in sin, Jesus still honored them. He washed Judas’s feet; He spent time talking respectfully to the woman at the well; He went to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. Jesus, the only perfect human being to live on this earth, moved toward sinful people; He asks us to do the same, beginning with the one closest to us – our spouse.

Robinson's discussion with God: "Tell me what it's like." "What what's like?" "To be God." "Like, how do you mean?" "Like, how does it make you feel to know you've created the planet earth and all its inhabitants. Do you feel proud? Sad? Embarrassed? Humbled? Mortified?" "The truth? I feel imposed upon. I feel like an exhausted father whose needy children never grew up. Do you know what I'd like to see? Honest to me, this would make me the happiest guy on earth. I'd like to see everyone just take responsibility for themselves. Stop seeking my favor with your expensive churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. And quit wasting your time expecting me to solve all your problems. Am I the numbskull who created all your stupid problems? No, all I ever did was plant a handful of seeds. I'm not the one who cheats, lies, plunders, steals, hoodwinks, bribes, and scratches and claws his backward way through the unfaithful to his loving spouse or who is disrespectful to his parents. And I'm not the one who rapes and pollutes oceans, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, deserts, and mesas. I'm not the one who's slaughtering all the whales in the seas, and I'm certainly not the one who's spreading AIDS, shooting innocent people with handguns and assault rifles, or overpopulating the planet. I'm not even responsible for acts of God. So what of the forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados? You can thank dear Mother Nature for these so-called acts of me. All these disaster are completely out of my hands. Don't you see? I'm just me, God, and no more or less. Yes, I'm willing to give advice here and there, but even then , you will discover than my advice is no better than the advice you'd give yourself. And why? Because I am you. I was never anything else. I never claimed to be anything else, So, you get down on your knees and say you have faith in me? Try having some faith in yourself and leave me the hell out of it. I'm a busy man. There are books I would like to read, music I'd like to listen to, art I would like to see, and some good shows on TV I really don't want to miss.

God’s renown is our first concern. Our task is to be an expert in “hallowed be your name” and “your kingdom come.” “Hallowed” means to be known and declared as holy. Our first desire is that God would be known as he truly is, the Holy One. Implicit in his name being hallowed is that his glory or fame would cover the earth. This takes us out of ourselves immediately. Somehow, we want God’s glory to be increasingly apparent through the church today. If you need specifics, keep your eyes peeled for the names God reveals to us. For example, we can pray that he would be known as the Mighty God, the Burden-Bearer, and the God who cares. “Your kingdom come” overlaps with our desire for his fame and renown. It is not so much that we are praying that Jesus would return quickly, though such a prayer is certainly one of the ways we pray. Instead, it is for God’s kingdom to continue its progress toward world dominion. The kingdom has already come and, as stewards of the kingdom for this generation, we want it to grow and flourish. The kingdom of heaven is about everything Jesus taught: love for neighbors and even enemies, humility in judgment, not coveting, blessing rather than cursing, meekness, peacemaking, and trusting instead of worrying. It is a matter of “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). Edward T. Welch February 1 Matthew 18:21–35 People mistreat us, sometimes in horrific ways. Spouses cheat. Children rebel. Bosses fire. Friends lie. Pastors fail. Parents abuse. Hurts are real. But how do all these one hundred denarii (about $6,000) offenses against us compare to the ten thousand talent (multimillion-dollar) debt we owed God, which he mercifully canceled? Since birth, and for all our lives, we have failed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). But in one fell swoop—by the death and resurrection of Jesus—God wiped our records clean. Through the cross of Jesus and our faith in him, God removed our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12); he hurled “all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Could it be that one reason you find it so hard to forgive is because you have never received God’s forgiveness by repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus as your Savior? Or maybe you have yet to grasp the enormity of God’s forgiveness of all your many sins. If you dwell on your offender’s $6,000 debt against you, you will be trapped in bitterness until you die. But if you dwell on God’s forgiveness of your multimillion-dollar debt, you will find release and liberty. Robert D. Jones

Priests, because they hear confessions and forgive sins and give counsel, are often called doctors of souls. You might call us the specialist surgeons of souls. We find the hidden problems, that people won’t speak about and couldn’t even if they would. We delve into the worst that human beings do—into the things that even they can’t explain—in order to find the person buried underneath the sin. Then we do our best to bring them back up with us. We see some of the harshest ugliness there is. Do you know why a person would cheat on their loving spouse with the full knowledge that it will wreck their children’s lives when the family falls apart? Do you know why a man would turn his own children against their mother so that they refuse to talk to her? Do you know why a woman would torture her children without leaving a mark, and scare them into not telling anyone? Do you know why people fake crimes and get their spouse arrested and sent to prison?” He stared at her expecting an answer, with an intensity that was almost frightening. She tried to voice an answer or two, but in the face of that earnest inquiry, they died unspoken. Easy answers and joking evasions wouldn’t do. She shook her head in the negative. “I do,” he said. “I’ve seen every one of those at least twice. And do you know what it’s taught me?” “What?” she asked, faintly. Sonia felt like she was talking with a monster. She was almost afraid of what lessons it had learned from the worst that human beings had to offer. “That the love of God is greater than all human evil. That where sin abounds, grace abounds more. I’ve seen some of the worst there is, and it doesn’t prove that life is meaningless. It proves that life is worth living. And it proves that we need God. I’m probably the most cynical person you’ve ever met, or ever will meet. But that doesn’t mean that I think life is bad. It means I know how much evil can exist in a good world. That’s what the faith gives me: I can stare evil in the face without blinking, because I know that it’s not the whole story.” He took a deep breath, then continued, a little more relaxed. “I’m sure that’s scary, if you’re used to blinking. I don’t know what to tell you, except that closing your eyes is not the way to be happy. If there’s something that you’re not supposed to look at, then look at it. If there’s something you’re not supposed to think about, then think about it. If something is too horrible to face, face it. Because the truth will set you free.” “You scare me,” she said, but it was an observation, neither a criticism nor a request to stop. He shrugged his shoulders. “Comfort is overrated,” he said. They stood there in silence for a few moments.

Practically put, we love our neighbor and refrain from gossip. We refuse to cheat on taxes and spouses and do our best to love people who are tough to love. Do we do this in order to be saved? No. These are “the good things that result from being saved.

We recruited people unable to forgive their spouses for cheating on them or for having alcohol or drug problems, their best friends for abandoning them, their parents for mistreating them, business partners for lying to them, or siblings for not caring about them.

yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . .

There are any number of reasons why people cheat: Physical gratification, revenge, lack of emotional intimacy in their current relationship, falling out of love with their spouse or partner, lack of appreciation or respect from their spouse or partner, sexual addiction, to list several.

Does God already know if you’re going to marry and, if so, who your spouse will be? If this were known with certainty by God before you were even born, do you and your future spouse actually choose each other of your own free will? And what if your spouse tragically ends up cheating on you or turns out to be physically abusive? Did God foreknow this as well? If he did, why didn’t he warn you and steer you toward a spouse with whom he knew you’d “live happily ever after”? In fact, if God foreknows everything ahead of time, why does he create people he knows will abuse others and even people he is certain will go to hell? Doesn’t he want everyone to go to heaven? If,

There is more than just infidelity here. Marissa’s cheating is a symptom, not the source of their fundamental breakdown.

Welcome to one of the most robust, if troubling, findings from the science of self-control: People who use their willpower seem to run out of it. Smokers who go without a cigarette for twenty-four hours are more likely to binge on ice cream. Drinkers who resist their favorite cocktail become physically weaker on a test of endurance. Perhaps most disturbingly, people who are on a diet are more likely to cheat on their spouse. It’s as if there’s only so much willpower to go around. Once exhausted, you are left defenseless against temptation—or at least disadvantaged.

The evidence was there before my eyes, but I could not believe it. I did not want to believe it. It was only when my sister forced the matter that I was compelled to accept the truth—that my wife had been seduced by my best friend, and was with child by him.

DJ had never understood the need to see the lives of others destruct on-screen. Divorce court, cops arresting drunks and batterers, all those shows where you watched people confront cheating spouses, abandoning parents, killers of loved ones felt voyeuristic to him.

DJ had never understood the need to see the lives of others destruct on-screen. Divorce court, cops arresting drunks and batterers, all those shows where you watched people confront cheating spouses, abandoning parents, killers of loved ones felt voyeuristic to him. Even if Julia was right and it was cathartic to those involved, the pull to then view that catharsis as entertainment seemed barbaric. And if the people suffering felt forced to do it for the money, well, that just took the pathos to another level.

It transpires that people in power display the same tendencies.10 They literally act like someone with brain damage. Not only are they more impulsive, self-centred, reckless, arrogant and rude than average, they are more likely to cheat on their spouses, are less attentive to other people and less interested in others’ perspectives. They’re also more shameless, often failing to manifest that one facial phenomenon that makes human beings unique among primates. They don’t blush.

No one plans to become an alcoholic, just like no one thinks they are capable of cheating on their spouse. We mentally segregate ourselves from “them,” believing we would never allow these things to happen in our lives. The truth is they do happen. They happen all the time to people just like you and me. I was taught that a marriage is safest when you accept that you could cheat—that anyone could—and take precautions to protect your marriage. Alcoholism is no different.

Many people, including many Christians, live out their lives under a weight of unforgivenness, blaming themselves for things that have gone wrong in their lives, blaming other people, particularly parents, children and spouses, for things that have gone wrong, feeling the weight of everyone else doing the same thing to them. Many people live with a sense of great obligation: obligation to God, to be impossibly perfect; obligation to other people, to be everything they need all the time; obligation to themselves, to achieve the highest results and position they possibly can. And since these obligations are usually impossible to attain, we live out our lives under a burden of guilt. Often people whom others regard as happy and sunny, outgoing and successful, are crippled inside with a sense of failure and inadequacy. And then there are, of course, the real sins, the real shortcomings: the violent temper, the sexual wrongdoings, the subtle cheating and lying and financial trickery to which most are tempted and many are prone. And over all this sorry mess, guilt both real and imaginary, is written the words, ‘It is finished.’ Jesus has dealt with it. The only reason for hanging on to that guilt and sense of failure is if you want to stop being one of Jesus’ friends. If you are a friend, you are a forgiven friend. Calvary achieved it. When you are invited to walk the way of the cross you are invited to do so as a forgiven friend. You’ve got nothing to prove any more. The only person worth trying to please loves you already so much that he died for you. If you are one of Jesus’ friends, every breath you take you should breathe in that sense of relief, of letting the past go, of forgiveness. That is the birthright of all who travel the way of the cross. This is the reality to be inserted into the tissue of the rest of our life.

Knowing that this kind of unmasked plutocracy can take root in democratic societies without so much as an effort to hide it is like being forced to watch your spouse cheat on you when that is not your kink.

The mistake men make is cheating on the meaning of life with a woman.

And what if I am being a little rational about Tyler? More people should be rational about their relationships. If they were, we wouldn’t have so many single moms with deadbeat baby daddies and cheating spouses who destroy their families.

Pete, to his credit, would respond to Rush at a Las Vegas town hall in a viral moment: The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values. I mean, I’m sorry, but one thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse, with him or her. So, if they want to debate family values, let’s debate family values, I’m ready.

Helpful. Handsome. Humble. A dangerous combination bound to attract envy and spite. Charles’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. He was on the phone with 9-1-1, informing them of the death, identifying himself to the woman on the phone, who apparently knew him, and giving the details. After he hung up, he gently led Gretchen back into the living room. I followed, wiping a tear from my eye. That tear reassured me. I had seen a lot of death in my time, and had caused a fair amount of it, too, but I had never become any more hardened than what the job absolutely demanded. Once out in the living room, I hardened again. One of these five senior citizens was a murderer, and I was the woman who could discover the culprit. Gretchen? The odds suggested that it was her. Most of the time when a married person gets bumped off, it’s the spouse. The motive was usually one of three things: money, abuse, or an affair. Lucien didn’t have much money and shared it all with Gretchen anyway, plus he wasn’t the abusing kind. People have surprised me before in that department, but that was well beyond the realm of possibility. An affair? Lucien didn’t seem the sort of person to cheat. From what I’d heard, he had refused many offers. In fact, he had refused someone in this very room.

Because revelations of systemic deception erode our most basic, default expectation of good faith, they play an outsize role in producing a crisis of authority. Each exposure of previously secret misdeeds—steroid use, Ponzi schemes, rigged intelligence—produces an acute and debilitating psychological effect. Vertigo sets in, similar to that experienced by a spouse who, after decades of what he thought was a happy, loyal marriage, discovers his wife has been cheating all along. Suddenly we realize we live in a world entirely more depraved than the one we thought we inhabited.

There are the moments you know you’ll remember forever as soon they happen: your engagement, standing at the altar and saying “I do,” the news of your spouse cheating, someone saying the words “you’re fired.” All those beautiful and wretched pieces of news available on your personal movie reel at any second and until the end of time. Still,

I never cheated on him. I feared speaking to men. Over the years, I was stalked. My spouse monitored my emails, text messages, phone calls, voice mail, and my social media. I had no privacy. If I objected to his monitoring, I was accused of hiding something from him. To

he must be giving them...such as don’t use your vagina (unless requested by a paying congressman) and don’t cheat on your spouse (unless you can afford to keep your side-piece quiet). Or best of all—you are the 47%, the bottom of the barrel. Aim low. And vote for me so I can make sure you stay there.

Data on children, in particular, show the auspicious results of religion on their well-being. According to sociologist John Bartkowski, professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the children of parents who regularly attend religious services exhibit better self-control, social skills, and approaches to learning. He found that religious networks allow moms and dads to improve their parenting skills; the social support they find from other religious parents helps to bolster their efforts. The values that inhere in religious congregations, such as self-sacrifice, also help. And, of course, religious communities imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance. When asked about these findings, another sociologist, W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia, put it succinctly when he said that at least for religious parents, “getting their kids into heaven is more important than getting their kids into Harvard.”58 Amen. More recently, Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark found that religious Americans, when compared to secularists, are more likely to marry and stay married; less likely to cheat on their spouse; less likely to abuse their spouse or children; and more likely to be successful in their career. Their average life expectancy is more than seven years longer, and their children are more likely to do well in school. Furthermore, 40 percent of those who attend church weekly report they are “very happy,” as compared to 25 percent of those who never attend church.

...then I wonder, does anyone ever intend on being that kind of person?

Contempt is born when we fixate on our spouse’s weaknesses. Every spouse has these sore points. If you want to find them, without a doubt you will. If you want to obsess about them, they’ll grow – but you won’t! Jesus provides a remedy that is stunning in its simplicity yet foreboding in its difficulty. He tells us to take the plank out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye (see Matthew 7:3–5). If you’re thinking “but my spouse is the one who has the plank,” allow me to let you in on a secret: You’re exactly the type of person Jesus is talking to. You’re the one He wanted to challenge with these words. Jesus isn’t helping us resolve legal matters here; He’s urging us to adopt humble spirits. He wants us to cast off the contempt – to have contempt for the contempt – and learn the spiritual secret of respect. Consider the type of people Jesus loved in the days He walked on earth – Judas (the betrayer); the woman at the well (a sexual libertine); Zacchaeus (the conniving financial cheat); and many others like them. In spite of the fact that Jesus was without sin and these people were very much steeped in sin, Jesus still honored them. He washed Judas’s feet; He spent time talking respectfully to the woman at the well; He went to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. Jesus, the only perfect human being to live on this earth, moved toward sinful people; He asks us to do the same, beginning with the one closest to us – our spouse.

Why is it that some bright students choose to cheat? Why do some otherwise upstanding citizens chisel on their income tax returns? Why do some physically-fit, talented athletes inject themselves with performance-enhancing drugs? How can some folks who profess to be religious look you in the eye and tell you a lie? How is it that some law-abiding people cheat on their spouses? Why do some super-wealthy corporate executives line their already bulging wallets through fraudulent methods? And, while we are figuring out life’s mysteries, why is it that some of the richest people seem to have the hardest time parting with money for those in need?

So you say you didn't see it coming, as in the cheating? But did you see your sensuality going? Because if you had seen your sensuality going, chances are you would have seen it coming. I'm not saying this to justify any reason why any man would cheat on his woman, but I'm saying this with the hope that you will perceive the effect sensuality has on a man. It's tremendous! And women who are very smart know how to use that understanding to their own advantage, hopefully to build something that is strong and long-lasting.

Oh, great, so they’re both cheating on their spouses together. How fucking fun. He should go, too, and make it a family affair. That would be the cherry on Redwood’s corrupt cake.

Carla Adamson was also on the list.  As one of Jack’s clients, Carla had more than fitness on her mind.  She was having an affair with Jack, one that made her husband fly off the deep end.  Had Jack promised to leave his girlfriend for Carla, then gone back on his word later?  Or, had things become even more dire after their affair had been exposed?  A woman who was comfortable cheating on their spouse was already treading on moral quicksand.  Would she sink as low as committing murder?  Steven Adamson made the suspect list as well.  Not only was he Carla’s husband, but he just found out his wife was having an affair last

night.  Murder was often a crime of passion.  No one took the news of their spouse cheating well, but just how poorly had Steven reacted?  Did the discovery of his wife’s infidelity turn deadly?  The suspect list continued with Kayla Maxwell.  She was Jack’s ex-girlfriend, and also the mother of his illegitimate child.  Kayla had come to Enchanted Bay with dollar signs in her eyes.

On the stairs, in the dank daylight, I take the necklace out of Bill's trouser pocket and look at it, then in at him, trying to fathom what to any other man would be obvious but to me is an impossible hiding, a lie too devastating, the series of events that must have unfolded to which I've been ignorant.

The antithesis of giving thanks is grumbling. The grumblers live in a state of self-induced stress. Like the crew of vineyard workers who had labored from dawn to dusk and felt cheated when latecomers received the same wage (Matt. 20:1–16), they bellyache about the unfairness of life, the paucity of their gifts, the insensitivity of their spouse and employer, the liberals who are destroying the church and the conservatives who have deserted their post, the hot weather and the cold pizza, the greedy rich and the shiftless poor, and their victimization at the hands of the IRS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the manufacturers of Viagra. (Small wonder that the stressed-out grumblers are two and a half times more susceptible to colds than grateful people, according to Ohio State virologist Ronald Glaser.) In his Rule for monasteries, St. Benedict considered grumbling a serious offense against community life. He wrote, “If a disciple grumbles, not only aloud but in his heart … his action will not be accepted with favor by God, who sees that he is grumbling in his heart.” Indicating his fierce opposition to this behavior, he added, “First and foremost, there must be