Recently, I read a disturbing story about a man married to a narcissist.
After finishing it, I had to thank God that I am single, made so by divorce. Ten years or so after my own marriage failed, I honestly feel blessed by God that I am no longer married.
Though I realize there are some happily married people out there, I honestly don’t know if I personally know of more than say, two or three at the most; marriage, for the most part, has become an unhappy affair for what seems to be the majority of people in America. This is beyond sad and most tragic.
As I read this article, I was again struck by a recurring thought that I often have: people—especially women—seem to be changing…and not for the better.
We have the stereotype of men that says they are the more promiscuous half of society, and though most of us rightly frown on adultery, a married man who fools around on his spouse is more accepted than an unfaithful wife. Though any partner that commits adultery is unacceptable, it seems that male infidelity is much more accepted than the other way around.
Women, at least in my generation, were more often than not looked upon as being the more chaste and faithful of our human species. For a woman to stray outside of the marriage boundary and find comfort and sex in the arms of another man was seen as something that not only should never happen, but it also seemed to rarely happen. Those days, as the old saying goes, are long gone.
I feel genuine sorrow for the husband who wrote the above letter. We all know that there are two sides to every story, but at first blush, this poor man is living in a real hell, created by his sex-crazed, psychopathic wife. And if he thinks his marriage will ever get better or that his continually straying, lustful wife will ever stop sniffing around for more and more strange, he is going to be sorely disappointed.
The definition of a narcissist is interesting. My ex wife shares some of these characteristics, so I can relate to his pain. Being married to such a person is an incredibly unhappy and miserable experience, and though I admire this mans desire to stay married for “the sake of the children,” I believe his noble feelings are misguided. He needs to get a divorce, let the financial chips fall where they may, and if his ex ends up getting the kids most of the time because he needs to work and earn his family’s needed bread, that is the unfortunate cost of a very ugly reality.
Nobody will win in this one. And the brutal and patently unfair reality that he will soon discover is that those who deserve the breakup of his family the least—the innocent children—will be profoundly damaged by it and hurt the most. The scars they will receive on their tender hearts will never fully heal and they will carry the pain and fallout from their mom’s infidelity for the rest of their lives.
Life, for far too many of us, is brutal, especially for our children.
Every generation seems to believe that things are getting worse in the world, that the younger generation coming up behind them is less moral, more violent, less committed to spiritual and moral values, more irresponsible, etc.
When it comes to marital infidelity, our hunches appear to be correct: more and more people are fooling around on their spouses, and this trend only seems to increase. And lest you think I believe my generation is somehow more moral than the younger, this article will show you that I am well aware that my generation has nothing to brag about.