Gives a whole different meaning to the expression about "You can pick your firends..."

I belong to a group through Trev and Emma's elementary school called All-Pro Dads and I get an email a day from them with advice on how to be a better dad and/or husband. They are usually pretty short and always have a link to another site, usually with a top ten type list of helpful hints on whatever the issue of the day is.

Today's email was thought-provoking for some reason:

Can You Affair-Proof Your Marriage?


In the book His Needs, Her Needs: Building An Affair-Proof Marriage, author Willard Harley relays the following about how affairs start:
 “An affair usually begins as a friendship. Frequently your spouse knows your lover; not uncommonly, the third party is the husband or wife of a couple you both know and consider ‘best friends.’ In another common pattern, the outside lover comes from your spouse’s family – a sister or brother. Or you may have met your lover at work.
 When an affair starts, it usually begins as a friendship. You share problems with the other person, and that person shares problems with you. As your friendship deepens, you start giving each other mutual support and encouragement, especially in regard to your unmet needs. Life is difficult. Many people become extremely disillusioned about their own lives. When they find someone encouraging and supportive, the attraction toward that person acts as a powerful magnet. Sooner or later, you find yourself in bed with your encouraging and supportive friend. It just seems to happen.”
The best way to prevent an affair is to stop it before it starts. And that means being very, very careful about good friendships with women other than your wife.

I have another idea. The best way to prevent an affair might be to not let my wife...or me either for that matter...have any close friends of the opposite gender. (If she wants to have an affair with someone of the same gender, I sure wouldn't want to discourage that!)

But kidding aside, if someone had asked me before I got married whether I thought one would be more likely to have an affair with a stranger or someone my wife knows, I think I might have said a stranger, so this theory above might have surprised, and maybe still does surprise me a little. But now that I visualize it, I can understand it. If I were the type to stray, I can totally see that happening...with Cheryl or me. I think we are all attracted, not necessarily in a physical way, to the people we choose to hang out with, and sometimes that leads to looking at them in a different way, but sometimes the two also go hand in hand, so to speak. I think it's easier to become friends with someone you are also physically attracted to at some level.

I've always maintained that I wouldn't be upset if I were to find out that Cheryl had had or was having an affair. It's her body, she can do what she wants with it. But I have a feeling that I don't ever really want to find out if I really mean that. I am more sure that I wouldn't want to divorce her for it. As we like to say about each other: We're stuck with each other. This is it for us. We really are in it til death do part us...though I think we both assume that we'll be together even longer than that. :-)

OK...enough about sex...back to posts about Christmas! Probably says something important about you as to which topic you prefer talking about more.