It’s Less About Sex…More About Being Desired Infidelity is tricky. On the surface it can seem like it’s all about sex and just wanting to engage in sexual activity with another or even multiple partners over the course of time. It can also seem as though the unfaithful just ‘wasn’t getting it at home’ so they went elsewhere. It’s an easy conclusion to come to, but merely scrapes the surface of the illegitimacy. A deeper look will reveal that it’s more about desire. We, the unfaithful, love to be desired. Unfaithful spouses typically resort to excuses like “I just wanted to be wanted for a change.” We’ll pin our affair(s) on our spouse’s lack of desire or passion and try to resort to blaming our spouse for making us vulnerable to an affair as they never wanted us. At least I did. In my case for example, Samantha did in fact, lose 90% of her sex drive and desire for me or any sexual activity at all. Why? Well here are a few reasons for why her sex drive diminished so severely. She was having kids, three to be exact. She was bedridden for 6 of the 9 months of pregnancy with all three kids. She was married to a control freak and workaholic who would be gone for a week at a time, or at the very least gone 4 to 5 nights a week doing ‘ministry.’ Why wouldn’t she feel her desire crash and burn? There was no connection and there was very little intimacy which was in place on a daily basis. We unfaithful spouses love to be desired like anyone, but quickly lose sight of the fact that we do have a responsibility in marriage to not only desire our mate (which was easy for me as I found Samantha absolutely gorgeous and extremely sexy) but we also must create desire for ourselves within our spouse by our connection with them. If we’re never connected with them, how will they ever feel desire for us? This isn’t new marriage where you both run around constantly desiring one another. This isn’t middle school or high school where hormones are running rampant and are firing on all cylinders at all times. This is real life, mid-life with kids, financial pressures, life changes, body chemistry changes, and perpetual look back’s to the life we thought we were going to have. Connection does not come easy anymore, except with fantasy and the illusion that being desired all over again will make life right again. It’s about desire and being desired. It’s about the insatiable hole within us, the unfaithful, which craves the feeling of being desired because we are not healthy. We are insecure. We are empty. We are craving validation. We want another to give us what we should only be able to find within ourselves and our mate. We want to blame someone else. We want to lay the blame at the feet of our spouse. Sure, we should be desired. Yet, we should create desire in our spouse for ourselves by our actions of emotional intimacy and connection, understanding that not every desire is to be pursued, as not every desire we feel is for our good. After all, if we’re constantly having to be desired, doesn’t it reveal an emptiness inside of us in the first place?
